http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/14/ex-midway-guy-suing-nintendo-for-wiimote-controls-has-himself-s/

Apparently, this guy had developed the thing for Midway to use on the dreamcast 8 years ago. This patent was apparently owned by midway, and then sold to Nintendo. I'm suprised Leo - J hasn't jumped on this one all over the place.

my opinion is as follows:

Buying a patent is not the same as buying an idea, buying a patent is buying permission to USE the idea.

Miyamoto and the rest of Nintendo probably figured this out just as much on their own, and then said: "damn, if we want to do this, we'll need to check and make sure patents aren't going to be an issue. Yo
snake, go sneak that shit" and so they checked the patents out and found that some guy they had never heard of had done patents for this, so they bought them so that they could actually do something useful with it, like add a pointer and a few more buttons to it and design an entire system around them to make sure it got supported with good games so that it actually became a success.

I'll give him credit where credit is due. He possibly was the first to make a real world demo of how this could be done, but to say that he was the ONLY one to come up with this idea on his own is ridiculous. He could probably get a decent job if he could officially put that on a resume, heck, maybe nintendo might be willing to hire.
The fact that he's not suing is really the only thing that makes this credible to me though.

I'd seen this story before, but the details that Nintendo had bought the patent and the dude isn't suing are new.

The guy gets credit for being ahead of his time. Nintendo gets credit for putting this idea into a hugely successful commercial product.

"Nintendo bought the Wii controller from Midway!!!"

They also stole the idea of a plumber named mario who has a bro name luigi who saves princess from a dinosaur named bowser from me!

haha wow really? Go fig. I thought that guy was total BSing.

Sounds like Midway got hosed.

Shame they could use the money. Should of got on the points sysetm.

I don't know, that controller looks more like the SIXAXIS to me but I guess Nintendo is the bigger target.

Anyways, hopefully that guy used the money to invest in some pants.

No where in the article does it say Nintendo bought the patent. However the patent has not been copied by Nintendo. If you look at the two patents you will see some obvious differences, one of them deals with the way the light sensor works, the Wii uses IR and two LED's, this system uses light from Pixels on the TV (Two different technologies). The other patent which I'm too tired to look up is even easier to dismiss from court if it ever wound up there. Hence the reason the guy will not sue. He would lose in court and it would be very costly to pursue.

Ok I just watched the fox report.  They even state in the video that the guy has no rights and that his patents are no where near what the Wii's tech is.  Basically they invented 2 different ways to do some similar things.  He is putting the video out there to try and get recognition for something he DID NOT INVENT. The patents are owned by Midway as he was an employee at Midway at the time and developed the technology on the company dime.  He signed away his rights to Midway when he left the company.  Nintendo did not purchase the tech from Midway, they built completely different technology to use in the Wii.

Oh, okay, I thought they had stated that Nintendo had bought the rights off of midway, if only out of the issue of ensuring that there wasn't any patent infringing.

And if you actually get a look at the controllers, it looks nothing like teh six axis, but it ends up looking like a dual nunchuck thing.

I'm suing Apple because I patented the idea of making a really successful computer company and breaking into the portable music industry.

Actually looking at the video it's very hard to tell if he has a joystick at the end of his tubes or whether that's a button. He calls it a joystick but it's impossible to tell if he's talking theoretically or factually about what's in his hands. In any case it's obvious that he's an attention seeker who felt scorned by his firing at Midway. He assumed Nintendo bought the patents from Midway when in fact Midway never even filed a patent for the device.

yes pants would be good