A lawsuit has recently been filed by a Texas based company (and also a known patent troll) aka Fenner Investments, against Microsoft and Nintendo.  The lawsuit is regarding an infringement of U.S. patent 6,297,751, for a “low-voltage joystick port interface.” The patent was originally granted to “Lucent Technologies” in 2001, and later acquired by Fenner Investments.

Microsoft and Nintendo have apparently stepped on Fenner Investments’ toes by utilizing technology that changes analog signals from a joystick into a digital signal.  The case was scheduled to begin on Tuesday, March 17th, however early in the morning on Monday, March 16th Judge Davis of the U.S. District court in Texas dismissed the case.

The lawsuit was brought up in January of ‘07 and initially included Sony. Fenner investments amended the suit a little over a month later, in February, effectively dropping Sony from the proceedings. There is no available information on the reason for them not pursuing Sony.

Nintendo of America’s legal counsel Rick Flamm stated, “We are very pleased with the court’s decision” and continued on to say, “Nintendo has a long history of developing innovative products, while respecting the intellectual property rights of others. We also vigorously defend patent lawsuits when we firmly believe that we have not infringed another party’s patent, despite the risks that this policy entails.”

This is definitely good news, especially for Nintendo, after the 21 million dollar loss on the patent lawsuit filed by another Texas based company, Anascape Ltd. in 2008.