Former Midway employee claims to have made Wii; law experts disagree

Now we’re sure that some of you have already picked up wind of this one: a former employee of Midway claimed to have developed the primary control device of the Nintendo Wii – the Wii remote – before the Wiimote was even conceptualized. However, law experts have other things to point out, including the apparent differences between the concept control and the actual Wii remote. We geek out at the full story.

Patrick Goschy, former Development Systems Technician at Midway, took to the airwaves when TV news aired his story about creating a motion-sensing controller believed to be inspiration for the Wii remote. Though Midway itself had little to no comment at all on the claim, Nintendo remained firm that the Wiimote is something totally different than his, and law experts agree.

But the first part of Goschy’s claim is authentic – a warning to speculative nay-sayers: the man did create motion-sensing controls long before the Wii remote came to realization, and true to his word, patents were filed to such work. There were two patents found under his name and carrying anything related to motion-sensing controls, and one of them were actually referenced by Nintendo for the Wii remote.

But with that said, the case was that Nintendo had its own patent up some time later, and their patent’s novelty was without question, despite the hundreds of similar patents (and concept models) already wading around. Attorney Mark Methenitis, creator of Law of the Game website, said:

While I won’t deny that Goschy’s patent certainly seems like the predecessor, the Wii-mote is clearly a full step beyond any other filed patent. In fact, the Wii patent wouldn’t have been issued if it lacked the ‘novelty’ to be patentable.

Patent attorney Richard Bleem seems to concur to that fact, stating that the Wii remote is “an advance over and above and beyond” the device Patrick Goschy developed, due to the fact that the Wii remote was especially technologically superior.

While Goschy’s makeshift controls used accelerometers, too, the Wiimote’s utilization of IR sensing features, as well as accelerometers, made Nintendo’s concept of motion sensing stand out differently from the rest of the 110 or so almost mirror patents, including the two Goschy filed.

There’s much that you’ll need to get primed on, including Midway way back in the late 90s and early 2000s, as well as the friction that occurred between Goschy and his former employer. More developments as we get them.