Lophan pointed out a Bloomberg story over in the HBO forum in which a company called Immersion is claiming that Microsoft and Sony are both infringing on patents it owns on force feedback technology.

While the Bloomberg story was not in evidence on their site this morning, a Reuters item was available on Yahoo; however, it does not mention Halo by name.

What's more, it appears that this suit is perhaps not as frivolous as many other infringement suits filed against major companies by smaller ones; a press release on Immersion's site notes they have reached a settlement in an earlier suit against InterAct accessories over peripherals they make for the PlayStation 2 that include tactile feedback features.

Apparently the suit follows long and unsuccessful negotiations with both companies. The firm representing Immersion against Sony and Microsoft, Irell and Manella, also successfully represented Immersion against InterAct, and was the firm that won a $120 million judgment in the suit against Microsoft filed by Stac Electronics over the illegal integration of compression routines used in their Stacker hard disk doubler software (even though that failed to save the company).