Their lack of a patent for controller vibration prevented Sony from having vibration on Sixaxis - notice that despite all the BS that it interfered with motion sensing, Dualshock 3 came out just a few months after Sony managed to settle the suite with Immersion.
Since there’s no penalty for making a patent and not using it, it’s probably cheaper for Sony to pre-emptively register everything that comes from brainstorming sessions.
A great example, immersion held a patent and blocked the competition.
However if Sony (or anyone else) had developed and released a product (or even published a design) using the same technical implementation before 1996 then that would have established prior art and no one would be able to patent it.
Their lack of a patent for controller vibration prevented Sony from having vibration on Sixaxis - notice that despite all the BS that it interfered with motion sensing, Dualshock 3 came out just a few months after Sony managed to settle the suite with Immersion.
Since there’s no penalty for making a patent and not using it, it’s probably cheaper for Sony to pre-emptively register everything that comes from brainstorming sessions.
A great example, immersion held a patent and blocked the competition.
However if Sony (or anyone else) had developed and released a product (or even published a design) using the same technical implementation before 1996 then that would have established prior art and no one would be able to patent it.