Sony Patents the Wii remote?

Well, leave it to Sony to do something crazy... you know, like put in a patent for another company's staple controller.

An input device providing users with a pointing capability includes a sender portion and a receiver portion. The sender portion is adapted to be manipulated by a user to specify a target point within a target area. The sender portion projects a light beam including a pattern on to the target area. A receiver portion includes one or more sensor units located in or near the target area. At least some of the sensor units receive a portion of the light beam regardless of the location of the target point within the target area. A processing unit in the receiver portion analyzes the portions of the light beam received by one or more sensor units to determine an attribute of the target point. The attribute can be the location or relative motion of the target point. The receiver portion may be integrated with a display device.

Hmm... Is it just me or does the "receiver portion" sound an awful like a Wii sensor bar? I wonder how this will do when it is decided upon. Come on Sony, you already feebly tried to get gyros into your Sixaxis controller at the cost of rumble functionality to try to play catch up on Nintendo ingenuity. Copying the other part now? /sigh

This reminds me of when Nintendo put up a patent for craziness in video games, but that's another story.

Full Patent and legal mumbo jumbo here.

\\drew