Three months ago, Sony was forced to shell out $97 million in damages and interest to Immersion, a company who sued Sony in a dispute over the rumble functions in Sony's Dual Shock controllers.
Now a US inventor John Thorner alleges that Sony and its affiliates cheated him out of royalties for a license that he held for the technology. He also claims that Sony conspired to obtain his patent using "dubious" means.
Thorner claims that he retained the patents for vibration feedback, which he subsequently licensed exclusively to Immersion. Sometime later he terminated the patent with Immersion and licensed the patent to another gaming industry manufacturer PDP.
He then found out that PDP and Sony were in league with each other to secure the patents and avoid hefty payouts to Immersion.
Thorner alleges that the partnership between PDP and Sony were not disclosed and had if it been, he would not have done business with them.
Thorner was the key witness in Sony's effort to overturn an $82 million patent infringement verdict in favour of Immersion over the vibrating video game controllers. It's also alleged that Sony agreed to pay Thorner $150,000 to be a witness for them.
Sony claimed that Immersion paid Thorner to keep quiet about inventions of his that could have invalidated Immersion's patents.
