Impulse Technology is suing Microsoft and eight game publishers, claiming the Kinect violates a number of patents. Some of the publishers include Electronic Arts, Sega, and Konami. Impulse is claiming that Microsoft's Kinect, and some of its software, violates seven patents that they hold dating back as far as 2001. Impulse claims they notified Microsoft in March about the patents but there is no mention in the suit as to whether Microsoft replied to that alleged notification.
Ohio based Impulse Technology claims that the Kinect system, which enables controller free gaming through body tracking (among other technologies), violates their motion-sensing patents. The suit was filed earlier this month in the U.S. District Court in Delaware. Law360 reported the original filing.
One of the patents in question was filed back in August 2002 (patent number 6430997) and has language that sounds startling familiar in the context of the Kinect system.
"The present invention provides a system for quantifying physical motion of a player or subject and providing feedback to facilitate training and athletic performance. A preferred system creates an accurate simulation of sport to quantify and train several novel performance constructs by employing: sensing electronics (preferably optical sensing electronics as discussed below) for determining, in essentially real time, the player's three dimensional positional changes in three or more degrees of freedom (three dimensions); and computer controlled sport specific cuing that evokes or prompts sport specific responses from the player."
Other patents have similar descriptions and most were filed until the title "System and method for tracking and assessing movement skills in multidimensional space" and appear to be specifically for video game technology.
Microsoft is obviously declining to about this specific case, Microsoft invests heavily in protecting our intellectual property rights and has hundreds of pending and issued patents covering Kinect."
From the language of some of these patents it seems like Impulse might just have a case here. Whether Microsoft can find a technicality that gets them out of this unscathed remains to be seen. If they can't, Impulse Technology stands to receive a ton of money from this case considering the strong success Kinect has seen so far. Interestingly enough, money is not the only thing Impulse is after here. The company is actually seeking a permanent injunction which would end Kinect hardware and software sales in the U.S. This could get very ugly very quickly.
