Immersion Corporation

Immersion Corporation of San Jose, California, is a leading developer in haptic technology.

Founded in 1993, Immersion's technology is deployed across automotive, entertainment, medical training, mobility, personal computing, and three-dimensional simulation markets. Immersion's patent portfolio includes over 500 issued or pending patents in the U.S. and other countries.

In 2002, Sony and Microsoft were sued by Immersion for patent infringement for the use of vibration functions in their gaming controllers. [1] [2] The patent numbers were U.S. patent 6,275,213 and U.S. patent 6,424,333. Both patents were continuation applications of a patent application originally filed in November of 1995.

While Microsoft settled out of court, Sony continued to defend the case. Sony lost, and will be required to pay $90 million in royalies to Immersion and suspend the sale of the controllers, including all PlayStation and PlayStation 2 console packages containing Immersion's patented technology. Sony appealed this decision and has been able to sell its products while the appeal was being heard. On March 12, 2006 Sony lost the appeal at the US District Court level and has subsequently appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. [3] The order to halt sales of the infringing controllers has been suspended pending the outcome of the appeal.

Nonetheless, at E3 2006, Sony announced that vibration functionality will be removed from the PlayStation 3 controller, reasoning that the vibration would interfere with the motion-sensing feature of the controller. It has been speculated that the removal of vibration is related to the lawsuit,[4] and Immersion President Victor Viegas has been dismissive of Sony's stated rationale.[5]

Immersion has been characterized as a patent troll due to its aggressive enforcement of its patent rights. Immersion's lead attorney in this case was Morgan Chu.

External links

• Company website