Philips requests the withdrawal of sales of the Wii U in the US

The Dutch company Philips claims financial compensation to Nintendo, as well as banning sales of the Wii U, in the United States. The Japanese manufacturer is accused of counterfeiting.

This is a patent war launched at Nintendo, who strangely was born today, as the last gasp of a procedural instinct. Philips has announced that Nintendo would attack to justice, in the United States, the Japanese company has not responded to its formal notice. The Dutch company accuses rival of violating some of its patents: Nintendo allows its users to control a virtual character through joysticks and other devices capturing the movements made by the player.

In its complaint, Philips accusing Nintendo to market without its permission "products of interactive virtual modeling" to "model the body of a user in a virtual environment by running a virtual body that follows the physical movement of the user" . In the second part of the complaint, Philips criticizes Nintendo devices using human-machine interaction (HMI) as the Wiimote, which infringes its patents.

For these reasons, Philips request outright stop sales of the Wii U, in the United States. This application is mainly based on two patents: one filed in 1996, on "a device to control a virtual body", the other filed in 2009 and carrying him on a "user interface system based on a pointing device. "

Phillips says it warned Nintendo, in a letter dated 14 November 2011, its alleged violation of the first patent. Phillips states that patent infringement is "deliberate and willful." Nintendo has not yet officially responded.