Sony fined and ordered to cease Playstation sales

• Gordonator

  31 Mar 05, 20:50

  Sony was ordered by a U.S. court to halt sales of its blockbuster PlayStation consoles in the United States and pay $90.7 million for patent infringement to a California tech company, Immersion Corp.
  
  Immersion, a small, California-based developer of digital touch technologies, claimed Sony Computer Entertainment infringed on its technology that makes a game controller vibrate in sync with actions in games. Immersion filed the law suit and was awarded $82 million by a jury's decision in September, 2004, plus an additional $8.7 million of interest.
  
  Sony appealed the decision and was granted a stay of permanent injunction, which allows the corporation to sell its products during the appeals process. For the time being, Sony will keep selling PlayStations as the order — which covers the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, two game controllers and 47 software titles — will not go into effect before the appeal, an Sony spokeswoman said. Sony will be paying compulsory license fees to Immersion, she added.
• jasmine17

  31 Mar 05, 21:27

  Sales of PSP will hopefully cover the cost of that lawsuit
• shade343

  31 Mar 05, 21:41

  Hmmm...I would have bought shares of Immersion if I had known this lawsuit was goin on... Wasted opportunity
• Gordonator

  31 Mar 05, 21:45

  Originally posted by shade343:

  Hmmm...I would have bought shares of Immersion if I had known this lawsuit was goin on... Wasted opportunity

  Immersion's shares jumped more then 5 percent.
  
  The $90 million awarded by the court is more than triple Immersion's total revenues of $23.8 million in 2004 and represents two-thirds of the company's current market value of around $135 million.
  
  Immersion's stock rose 36 percent to $7.85 on the Inet electronic exchange, from its $5.75 close on Thursday.
  
  
• shade343

  31 Mar 05, 21:51

  Originally posted by Gordonator:

  Immersion's shares jumped more then 5 percent.
  
  The $90 million awarded by the court is more than triple Immersion's total revenues of $23.8 million in 2004 and represents two-thirds of the company's current market value of around $135 million.
  
  Immersion's stock rose 36 percent to $7.85 on the Inet electronic exchange, from its $5.75 close on Thursday.
  
  

  They used to be trade for 55 cents One small company can cause so much trouble for Microsoft and Sony