Person A in country A conceives an idea. At the very same time Person B in country B conceives the very same idea. Person A has no concept of patents, but proceeds with developing his idea. Person B registers his idea as a patent, and files lawsuit against Person A. Is Person B’s idea valid and Person A’s isn’t? Can Person B really have a monopoly on an idea even if people all around the world may have or have had the same idea ?

If you take just a moment to think about it, you realise how silly the whole business is.

It’s one thing thing to create an idea, and another to just copyright ideas that don’t manifest. And when it comes to products from overseas, it’s all down to which came first, the chicken or then egg.

Sure there a very few ideas that are ultimately original, many ideas have some similarity with other people’s ideas. It does not always mean that the idea was willfully copied, and the makers was trying to cheat someone out of licensing fees.

When you work with an international company, you always run into problems of people trying to register your company’s name and ideas in a foreign country, to try to extort money from the company. And in some cases, I have known rival companies trying to register products and company brands, so they can’t be used in the country that you are trying to set up in.

If the patent in question, actually exists, and not just an idea on paper, then yes, Nintendo and MS should be held responsible, but if it isn’t, and the company has not shown an effort or an interest to created the product in the patent, then it really starts to sound like a case of patent trolls.

There are literally millions of patents in the US that are useless or just “ideas”(for example, the famous gun helmet- they proved that it would not only make you go deaf, but knock you out cold every time you shoot the thing!), and many people are getting sued based on them.

Hey, I know. I’ll get a patent for controlling an object without a stick or buttons! Then all I would need to do is sit back and wait for someone to actually get it to work, market it, sell millions of the product, and sue them!

But all joking aside, just because a big company is involved, does not automatically mean that they are evil, or underhanded, and just because the company is from another country does not mean that it’s trying to cheat or take over your country. Remember, the “evil” foreign run companies that make and sell cars, games, electronics, etc… are often staffed and run by people in your own country (even the evil Big 4).

Just my two cents.

Because everyone knows large corporations never steal ideas from smaller
companies knowing that they can out finance the smaller companies in court
most of the time. Corporations are always honest and good.

dose some one not have a patent for clickable buttons in web-browsers?