But on the other hand, we’re all familiar with these really ridiculous claims about intellectual property — that such and such a company owns the concept of “deep linking”, or that an other company invented the idea of “shopping carts” and therefore should be paid every time a shopping cart is used, regardless of whether the same technology is driving that shopping cart.

Akismet is still out to get you.

If the inventor, Brad Armstrong, actually had his controller design stolen by Nintendo then he would have a strong case. But I suspect it’s a lot more fuzzy than that. The jurors’ eyes probably glazed over a lot in the court room with all the technical cross examination and saw it as the little guy vs. the big corporation. So the jury voted his way more on that basis than the actual facts. The Nintendo lawyers probably should have used the Chewbacca Defense