14 DAY TRIAL // Impulse Technology, a company based in Ohio, has filed a lawsuit against software giant and Kinect developer Microsoft, saying that the company is in breach of no less than seven of its patents that are linked to how the movement of a player is tracked in order to be translated into inputs for video games.
The patents that Impulse has are referring to a “system and method for tracking and assessing movement skills in multidimensional space” and to an “education system challenging a subject’s physiologic and kinesthetic systems to synergistically enhance cognitive function”.
Impulse Technology is saying that it has talked to Microsoft about its patents and has notified the company that it is in breach and that it will sue if an agreement is not reached between them.
The law suit says that Microsoft is knowingly violating the patents and asks the court to award a permanent injunction, order Microsoft to pay damages, interest and cover all costs associated with attorneys and the legal action.
Impulse is not only going after Microsoft and has named a number of video game companies, like Electronic Arts, Konami, SEGA and others, as co-defendants because their Kinect-based video games breach the company's patents.
The Kinect motion-tracking system has been one of the big hits for Microsoft in the last year.
The device launched during the month of November 2010 and has since surpassed the 10 million units sales mark while also allowing developers to move more than 10 million titles designed specifically for it.
Kinect has allowed the Xbox 360 home console from Microsoft to perform better than its main competitors, the PlayStation 3 from Sony, which has its own motion tracking through the Move, and the Nintendo Wii, the console that pioneered the concept.
It's unlikely that sales of Kinect or video games based on it will suffer because of the Impulse lawsuit.