Patent trolls are so prolific these days that you don't really need to be successful to draw lawsuits. Case in point, a recently formed California company called TZU Technologies is demanding cash from six different players in the "virtual sex" industry—which barely even exists.
TZU is using US Patent No. 6,368,268 to sue six companies working in the touch-over-Internet arena: Comingle, Holland Haptics, Vibease, Internet Service, Frixion, and Winzz.
The patent was invented by Warren Sandvick, president of a Texas company called HasSex, which has an extremely trollish website and licensed the patent several times. Filed in 1998, and granted in 2002, the patent lays broad claim to a remotely controlled sexual "stimulation system," one version of which involved a "second user interface" located remotely from the first.
This year, Sandvick apparently sold the patent to TZU, which has bigger plans for the patent. Earlier this week, TZU filed six lawsuits.
The guys at TZU sound like a bunch of tools.
Teledildonics at Wikipedia.
(Score: 4, Informative) by darkfeline on Saturday July 25 2015, @04:45AM
Have you been living under a rock? Heck, Emacs has had teledildonics support since 2010!
https://github.com/qdot/deldo [github.com]
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