Sony is currently engaged in a legal battle with Immersion over technology that makes gaming controllers vibrate, and the case is not going well. Sony's latest attempts to get the court to dismiss the case have been chucked out by a Federal Judge. The case centres around Immersion holding US patents 6,275,213 and 6,424,333, which use computer-controlled vibrating motors to provide feed back to a player during a game or other application. Immersion launched legal action against Sony and Microsoft for their vibration feedback system for controllers in 2002. Microsoft paid up, leaving Sony to face the music alone.
In September of 2004, Sony lost a jury trial and was ordered to pay US$82 million in damages. An appeal in 2005 increased the amount of damages to $91 million.
Undeterred, Sony claimed that Immersion was holding back evidence and requested that the original verdict be tossed out. It said that the inventions of Craig Thorner, who worked for Immersion, were not properly disclosed to its legal team.