You might remember the lawsuit Immersion filed against Sony back in 2007. The company was holding patents for control pad rumble technology and felt Sony owed them some money. There was a lawsuit and Sony settled it by paying a total of $22,500,000 to Immersion.

One would think this is it, end of story. But a witness called Craig Thorner, an engineer who held a few patents related to the rumble technology, disagrees. After two years of silence he's suing Sony.

Shortly after the Sony/Immersion suit was filed, he was approached by a company called Performance Designed Products LLC. They said that, like Sony, they were being sued by Immersion and so PDP asked him to help them out.

By providing that help, Thorner licensed some of his own patents to PDP, and in doing so enlisted the help of some lawyers of his own. These lawyers were thesame ones who were handling Sony's case against Immersion. He claims those lawyers tricked him into accepting terms that were less than favorable.

He got a lot less money from royalty fees, along with an agreement which meant that not just PDP but also Sony was able to license his patents.

So now Thorner is claiming Sony and PDP were in fact working together, trying to gain access to the Rumble related patents without having to pay in full for them. He is suing both PDP and Sony for legal malpractice and also filed a new patent infringement lawsuit against Sony.

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