More Patent Lawsuits Over Interactive Sex Toys -- The Teledildonic Patent Thicket

from the quite-a-patent-thicket dept

A few years ago, we wrote up a story about a patent fight concerning force feedback technology used in "cybersex" or "teledildonics." That case involved two patents from famed haptics company Immersion (5,889,672 and 6,275,213) which was involved in a bit of a legal fight with a company called Internet Services. The details suggested that Immersion -- who was famous for pioneering things like "force feedback" in video game controllers -- had licensed its patents to Internet Services, so that it could use them in the virtual sex space (also known as "teledildonics" -- you can figure it out). Immersion felt that it might not look good for an upstanding company such as itself to be involved in such a business, hence the licensing.

Well... now it appears that some others are claiming teledildonics patents, and they're not at all happy with Internet Services. Apparently a company called New Frontier Technologies, which licensed a patent (6,368,268 -- "method and device for interactive virtual control of sexual aids using digital computer networks," -- and you shouldn't miss the (possibly NSFW) flow charts on pages 5 and 6 of the patent) from another company, Hassex, is suing Internet Services for violating that patent with its "Real Touch" masturbation tool. Of course, it will be interesting to see if Internet Services fires back with the Immersion patents that it licensed.

In the meantime, this all brings new meaning to the concept of innovation happening when ideas have sex.

Filed Under: patent thicket, patents, sex toys, teledildonics
Companies: immersion, internet services, new frontier technologies