Dallas Tech Company iLife Thinks Nintendo Stole Its Idea For Motion Control

Here we go!!!! Again...

Not this BS again...

iLife's siteweb is so 1990.

Yay Patent Trolling, thanks congress

another one?

If true (which I highly doubt) why has it taken them this long, why not when the Wii came out.

@Ony - I think it's run in Prodigy.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57556230-1/my-best-tech-gift-ever-prodigy/

Well I was going to give them grief for being named "i" anything and then suing somebody for copying them, but I clicked thru on their patents and they do seem to exist from the late 1990's to early 2000's w/ the iLife name on them.

Would any company post fake patents docs on the web?

Again?

I think this is the 7th time something like this has happened on motion controls alone.

"We invent peac of mind" so... your gana sue everyone who has idears now too? ... lol reminds me of that stupid woman in the US who clamed she owned the Sun and triyed to sue enione who "Got use out of the sun" -_- some ppl need to get a grip of reality

"Up to four Wii Remote Plus controllers can be connected at once using wireless Bluetooth technology. The wireless signal can be detected within 10 meters of the console. Both the Wii Remote Plus and Nunchuk controllers include motion sensors. The Wii Remote Plus also includes a speaker, rumble feature and expansion port, and can be used as a pointer within five meters of the screen." Errrrrm.. the NON motion plus controler had a speacer too... this just pruves that thay dont do the darn reserche....

So to those like Sony and Microsoft who just copy ideas from Nintendo don't get sued to those "Lawsuits" because they use gamepads?????

Didn't PS3 have a motion remote like the Wii remote did?

Current laws need to be reworked to lessen the amount of patent troll cases. End of

Nintendo won the case against the last loser of a company that tried to pull this trick on them. De ja vu... It seems the only way iLife can make money from anything it claims to be theres is by suing other companies that have actually done something with the technology.

Y does it matter know anyway. The courts should make it so a lawsuit over a patent happen in a year of the offender, not 7 years later. Also, the Wii Remote was made in Japan, so it was patented in Japan, not here.

So they were unaware of the Wii for over 7 years? Damn these patent trolls. How come you're not suing sony for their motion controllers.

Looks like the success of that 3D Camera lawsuit has emboldened another patent troll.

@N64ever what i dont get is why arnt thay going after Mobile / Cell phone makers as thay have all of what the gamepad has and more..

@Volmun I know right these patent suits are the new suing fast food for making you fat suits.

iLife does not seem to be run very efficiently.

So the original Wii remote was released Nov 2006, and Motion Plus sometime in 2009 if I am not mistaken. They are only discovering NOW that Nintendo infringed on the patent??

Damn u therick122! I was writing the exact same post when I saw it pop up above

As many have already said, it's funny how these inventors took nearly 8 years to figure it out. I think the patenting system will either have to change or will become worthless if everyone can successfully sue big ideas by claiming their own patents preceded any major innovation that comes along.

Oh boy, here we go again.
Well, here's my two cents:
I patented patent trolling, so...

@Damo any news on this weeks Nintendo Download?

@N64ever Only filing this lawsuit now, when the WiiMote has been around for more than 7 years, really is suspicious.
But about the PS3 point: the Move controller utilizes relative position detection using a camera and the obnoxious lightbulb on top of the controller. By calculating speed and distance, movement is mirrored onto movement feedback modules used in every game with Move support. But positioning is not determined via bluetooth, if I remember correctly, but by utilizing the Ad-Hoc connection (which is more like wi-fi than bluetooth).

Good lord, again? Oh well, more than likely they'll hand out a spanking to these guys too. Unbelieveable. I still believe they're patent trolls...no one makes all kinds of innovative products (as these guys claim) then doesn't bother to put them on their website.

I know iLife Technologies.

They invented peace of mind.

Aww!!! Here we go again!!!

...embedding never works for me.

ok i have a few things:
"if you don't use it, you lose it" so i guess this applies here too right if they didnt put use to the tech they lost it so someone else put it to use? xD

herp derp come on this took how many years now for them to file a law suit and what not? but what about sony getting suede too?

Sounds to me like iLife are plagiarizing Apple with their name.

@phoenixology I was thinking that as well. Would be funny if Apple went after this company. I'm directing all of my anger created from SMB3 not being released on the Virtual Console in the US yet towards this iLife company.

@therick112 Usually a company tries to get the infringing party to license out of court first. However, (IANAL disclaimer) this sounds more like someone found these patents for medical devices (the Wii Fit U sensor for example) and realized they could make a lot of money by suing other industries in a Patent Troll friendly TX court. It looks like the original 2002 patent was modified in 2006 and 2009 to make it more and more broad and abstract so they could do exactly what they are doing now.

Gotta love the US! Lawsuit culture at its finest.

I'm fine with this. I have no fear that Nintendo will win. If they really stole this idea from them, they would have said something a long long time ago. I mean it been years since the Wii released, But I enjoy watching a court case play out.

2006 called. They want their frivolous lawsuit back.

Funny how these guys claim to have invented the technology first, yet I've never seen or heard of a motion-control device from iLife. Nintendo has nothing to be worried about.

this is dupid.

This company appears to be a classic patent troll.

It files about two lawsuits a week.

They're gonna lose this one. HARD.
Not even Phoenix Wright could do anything at all about it!

Scooby and the Gang couldn't solve this case

they are not going to win this case. Go Nintendo.

?

Never Known Nintendo Copying Some Other Company

?

how long has the Wii been out and they chose to do this now

smells of bull and money grabbing to me

Basically...

The Wii's life has come and gone. They're a day late and a dollar short on this one. Not only that, but I've never heard of iLife before.

They've invented not being relevant.

Trolls. You can't just decide nearly a decade later that a company is infringing your copyrights with pretty much zero evidence to back up your claims asides from a dodgy patent.

This kind of reminds me of that other idiot Tim Langdell who tried to claim copyright infringement every time somebody used the word 'Edge', lol

Uh the Wii came out in 2006 ... It's now 2014 and you are just realizing someone stole your idea? 8 years ago ... Sounds Fake as Hell to me...

2 more years and it'd be the patent trolling of the decade, if you get what I mean

If it's the war you want, then it's the war you'll get. But be advised: Not one of ya's gonna survive this.

So it took them 7 years to realize that Nintendo's famous motion controllers infringe on their patents so blatantly... Yeah, I don't think they have any case here. If there was such an infringement, they would have filed a claim years ago.

iLife? I'm pretty sure they are infringing on apples patents with that name alone

Why does every one of these companies have an i in their name? Can Apple sue for overuse of lower case i's?

Go into Big Lots! there is a TONNE of stuff there with the iLife brand in the Electronics "section."
It's mostly just crap that fails after a few uses, if it even lasts that long...
This will get thrown out soon...

"Original Inventors?"

Anyone tell this guy to get in line?

I feel bad for Nintendo though...
Think of all the money that they are spending on Court Fees and Lawyers.
That money could be going into R&D, but no, it's wasted on these jerks...
I think that all these companies got together behind closed doors with Sony and Microsoft and they were told to bring as many Lawsuits as possible against Nintendo to bankrupt them this way, because they can't do it through sales alone....

Oh noes, your products are damaging our completely unrelated products. Our lawyers are insisting that we are acting honestly, therefore we are.

I love America...

Well, Apple should sue this "company" for using iLife as it's name... ´Merica.

Why do these guys always figure out so late that people 'stole' their ideas? Yeesh.

@FJOJR LOL, ref. to Regular Show.
THE 80'S CALLED THEY WANT THEIR PHONES BACK!! man so funny..

Arent they slightly ever so late. Hell Wii isnt in production anymore.
This gets on my nerves. Should be no product no patent.
You can have a company that dosent actually do anything claim patents for everything.

Well this company stole the name from Apple Products and Apple ain't suing you hahahaha

@HeroOfCybertron Right !

The company is called iLife.

Do they honestly expect anyone to take them seriously?

Definitely a patent troll.

When was their supposed "breakthrough" technology created? If I remember correctly, the Wii entered development shortly after the GameCube launch in 2001. I seriously doubt they were making motion controllers before that.

And considering the fact that they filed 8 lawsuits since December 2012, I think it's perfectly acceptable to label this company a patent troll. So pathetic...

I don't even care anymore.

It's pretty obvious to me that this a patent troll case. Their patent was repeatedly modified in 2002, 2006, and 2009 to intentionally make it more broad just so they do this stuff. Does anyone know if they happen to have sued Microsoft over the Kinect, because with how they describe their technology in the 2009 patent it would be easy to get a lawsuit going. Generally speaking though, suits like this don't register on the radar of big companies. A few million dollar buyout is nothing to something Nintendo.

Land of the trolls, home of the greed. 'Murica

Brother…this is just stupid. All they want is cash. Let's all settle this by betting on who can find the eight red coins on Cool Cool Mountain first! (SS64)

Yeesh, another one for Nintendo to have to fend off.

Down with patent trolls! Beat them up in court, Nintendo! Use an invincibility star! Haha

Yo, Apple, someone's using "i" before their name, go get 'em!

By the way, why not file this 8 years ago? Bloomin' patent trolls. Why not get off your fat donkey and use your patents instead, rather than waiting for someone to develop it then actually USE it. No respect for this iLife company, what a bunch of wan- Chris720 is being sued because of iLife's patent on this word

So was Tom Quinn's gyration technology not his own?

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/378029/features/revolution-the-story-of-wii/

Also, I attempted to email [email protected] ridiculing them for being ~8 years late. But received a bounce back by their server: mail.net4india.com
lolz

You know theyre lying when it takes 7 years to sue

If iLife has their name patented, they would have an easier time going after Apple for using the name on iLife software. I'm sure the reason their page is called iLifesolutions, is because apple already had iLife.
@JohnBgon That Tom Quinn story pretty much negates iLife Solution's attack on Nintendo. Well, I don't blame it for getting bounced back, according to their site, they haven't updated in over a year.
The Wii which, released in 2006, Was first publicly revealed 9 years ago.... Which again raises the question.... Why now? They say they have something against the Wii U? It's over a year old.

Ugh! those bass-turds!

@HeroOfCybertron

EXACTLY what I was thinking. Sure, they could have stolen the tech....eight years ago. That's a long time, especially considering how popular the Wii was so pretty much everyone knew about it. That's patent trolling if I ever saw it. Today, I said 1+1=3 and then patented my stupidity...pay up Texas, especially you Bush.

Maybe ilife are being goaded by Lawyers so that they will have to pay a large legal bill just to the lawyers lol.

So lets see... Wii Was Released Nov 19th 2006. Ilife filed suit for patent violations on 6 patents, 2 of which were issued after the Wii was released, another in Aug. SO first we are to believe that Nintendo infringed on Patents that weren't even in exsistence at the time?

We can assume Nintendo started devlopment for the Wii and it's controller before the system launched so Second, we are to believe that while Nintendo made their controller they failed to patent their technology

Based on that I am looking at three of the sex can be thrown out leaving us with a possiblity of three Patents infringed.

They also included the Wii U gamepad and Wii U into their suit and ask for an injuction on those products as well.

What I see here is a company with 3 possible patents that could target the Wii controller, (Not the non chuck) and only the controller. 3 of 6 patents that can be thrown out due to dates. I won't say they are trolls but the suit seems a little late to show which makes it suspicous

Are you kidding me? This is a joke, right?

There is no way that this lawsuit is legit or even worth taken seriously. Get 'em, Nintendo!

oh wow here we go again and really now they sue after the wii is done.

@HeroOfCybertron I think you know the answer to that question.... If the Wii flopped we would have never seen this happen..... But since it was a smashing success every company wants a piece.....

I mean, why Nintendo? Why not go after Sony for 'Move' ? Because 'Move' was an abysmal failure.

I just registered a patent for posting comments on this story. You'll all be hearing from my lawyer.

Patent Trolls are best spottet by focusing on companies that try so hard not to be called Patent Trolls.

I'm pretty sure I invented using motion for playing games when I came up with the idea of picking up two (2) plastic cubes with numbers on each side, tossing my arm around repeatedly to sufficiently randomize their orientation, and then releasing them onto the table or gaming surface (henceforth known as "THE SURFACE" — Microsoft, you'll be hearing from my lawyers as well) and using the resulting random number created by combining the two values shown on the top-most face of each cube to influence the board game I was playing.

This is bullpoopydoodiedoggiepooples, and I want my cut of Nintendo's profits too!
_{Please watch the profanity — TBD}

@element187 and ironically a complete ripoff of Nintendo's technology, who to my knowledge has not sued Sony yet.

At least Microsoft had the decency to explore a different method of accepting motion input when they set out to imitate Nintendo's success.

While this is likely a so-called "patent troll" in action, I just love how people in the comments section on these types of stories are all of the sudden legal experts who pretend to actually know what they're talking about, when they clearly don't. I find it rather entertaining.

Kill 'em Nintendo

So they don't sue nintendo during the "printing money" wii yrs.....but they are suing them during the "revenue loss" wii u years.

Patent trolls? Possibly
Stupid patent trolls? Definitely

@the_shpydar Please do share your insight (I'm not saying this sarcastically.)

@SebCroc Thank you for your interest. In all honesty I'd rather not get into a long legal discussion — lawyerly stuff is what I do all day, and the last thing I want to do when I'm home for the night and reading my fave video game site is discuss legalities. Sorry. But I do appreciate the fact that you actually want to know more.

Just one quick legal point though: the timing of the suit is irrelevant — 7 or 8 years after the Wii was released? So what. There are statutes of limitations for lawsuits, and the fact that they exist doesn't mean that a suit needs to be filed right away. We have no idea what's gone on behind the scenes — iLife may have been trying to deal with Nintendo for years to work out a settlement and once that wasn't going to happen, iLife decided to file suit.

Sadly, I can't help but think if this exact same situation was happening but iLife was suing Sony or MS, then the same commenters on this site would be supporting iLife.

Facts are this — we don't know the full extent of this suit, its validity, or its likely outcome. iLife does appear at first blush to be something of a patent troll (though this term, more properly referred to as a "patent assertion entity", is being misused by many — it's correctly used to refer to companies who sit on owned patents to collect revenue, while creating no true products of their own), but we don't have all the facts.

Even if they are a "patent troll", if Ninty did infringe on patents that they hold, then iLife is entitled to restitution (so long as they are acting in good faith, which will of course be a large part of the argument in defense).

Meh, time to turn by brain back off and watch more Old School Raw.

@the_shpydar No, we don't know all the facts, but that doesn't mean we can't use our God-given common sense to arrive at some logical conclusions. And considering it's a fact that this company has filed 7 other infringement lawsuits in the last 2 years alone, and it's a fact that the Wii has been out for over 7 years, it's more than reasonable to assume the obvious. This company is looking for easy money. Sure it "could" turn out they have a legitimate case, but I seriously doubt it.

why are the hottest chicks always in the background?

It took them this long to realise their patent was infringed? Where was this back in 2006. They just saw a chance with the 3DS camera issue to try and get some cash.

America, the land of the baseless lawsuits.

Well Nintendo did steal the no Glasses 3d technology. So this wouldn't surprise me either. If they did Pay them, if they didn't fight them and win. Nintendo also had Contracted out the manufacturing of the Wii to a company who was Exploiting Children and that story got buried very fast and Nintendo was let off the hook because it was contracted. Seriously they need to know who they are doing business with. This is the kind of thing that happens when you contract out work.

@AlexSora89 Hey, from the future on August 31, 2017. iLife won the case and Nintendo has to pay 10 million, crazy

@JaxonH I guess they had a legitimate case because they won. Only took over 4 years, but Nintendo owes iLife 10 million

@Pokefanmum82 Hey, August 31, 2017 iLife wins case and Nintendo owes $10 million

@BravelyDavid
(problem with recycling articles is you're responding to comments made long ago)

Isn't the first time a company has won an initial claim. But the last time this happened the appeals court overturned the decision.

So we'll see how it pans out years from now after the appeals process. Even if they lose, 10 mil is a far cry from what they were seeking

And btw, why are you here spamming the same response to multiple comments in an old article?

Are you an iLife employee trying to spread word of your minor court victory today?

@JaxonH Haha no, I honestly saw the news on another site and searched google for some more info about it and stumbled upon this article. Only reason I made snarky comments was because some people were so sure that Nintendo would win. "They're gonna lose this one. HARD." "they are not going to win this case. Go Nintendo." I got a good laugh knowing after the fact what the result was.

@BravelyDavid
Well, most of the time these suits do lose. And quite often they are awarded a win in the lower courts only to be shut down in appeals.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170320005598/en/Win-Patent-Case-Nintendo-3DS-Confirmed-Appeal

https://www.engadget.com/2010/04/13/nintendo-wins-appeal-in-anascape-suit/

So ya, nothing is over yet. It'll be years before a final appellate verdict is rendered.

@BravelyDavid
Wait, what?

@Kolzig
"Comin' again, to save the motherlovin' day, yeah!"