[games_access] Tobii and SteelSeries team up to launch eye-tracking game controller (Barrie Ellis)

Mon Jan 6 13:57:18 EST 2014

Hi,

UN CRPD article 30:

"3. States Parties shall take all appropriate steps, in accordance with
international law, to ensure that laws protecting intellectual property
rights do not constitute an unreasonable or discriminatory barrier to access
by persons with disabilities to cultural materials."

Does this refer also to patents?

Regards,

Sandra

Von: games_access-bounces at igda.org [mailto:games_access-bounces at igda.org] Im
Auftrag von Ian Hamilton
Gesendet: Montag, 6. Januar 2014 16:37
An: games_access at igda.org
Betreff: Re: [games_access] Tobii and SteelSeries team up to launch
eye-tracking game controller (Barrie Ellis)

Yep that's exactly what happened:

"Eye tracking for research has been around for a decades, but sensors and
computing power were too expensive to make it available for "home use".

When we started the eyeCharm project at Kickstarter, we set out to make eye
tracking affordable.

Affordable to the creative ones wanting to develop their own visions;
affordable to the visionaries wanting interact with their computers in a
whole new way;
and affordable for those, whose only way it is to interact with a computer.

When we reached our funding goal, we were honored by your backing and
enthusiastically jumped to work making good progress.

Maybe too good...

A company holding patents in eye tracking, threw a roadblock into our way by
claiming, that we might be infringing a patent. They asked us to stop the
eyeCharm or negotiate a license price with them - Adding such a license
price would have effectively made it impossible for us to deliver the
eyeCharm to you.

We are convinced, that the patent in question should not have been granted
in the first place and we are most probably not even infringing it, but in
spite of our conviction, the only way to resolve this would be to go for
litigation.

We can not afford to even begin a patent litigation especially with the
patent in question being a US patent."

Apparently Sony has a patent on combining eye tracking with motion detecting
devices, perhaps that's who killed it? Real shame, and not very nice for the
backers that they're not offering any refunds to either. The discount price
that they've negotiated with Tobii is something at least, but that only
helps backers who wanted a cheap device themselves, it doesn't really help
the backers who backed because they wanted to see cheap devices on the open
market.

> From: games_access-request at igda.org
> Subject: games_access Digest, Vol 122, Issue 2
> To: games_access at igda.org
> Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2014 10:00:04 -0500
> 
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> Today's Topics:
> 
> 1. Re: Tobii and SteelSeries team up to launch eye-trackinggame
> controller (Barrie Ellis)
> 2. Re: Tobii and SteelSeries team up to launch eye-trackinggame
> controller (Thomas Westin)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2014 09:53:20 -0000
> From: "Barrie Ellis" <oneswitch at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [games_access] Tobii and SteelSeries team up to launch
> eye-trackinggame controller
> To: "IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List"
> <games_access at igda.org>
> Message-ID: <82FF7B05B8EB49C6B8BA5F9EE3CDBC70 at OneSwitchPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Hmm... Maybe this is what is needed to get the price of eye-trackers down
and into the mainstream, but it doesn't look like it will do anything for
game accessibility straight away. It could be just be another set of
controls to add to others that are used already. It could make games even
less accessible to many. I guess a few people will make interesting
gaze-only games which would be great, but if it uses closed proprietary
interface/software that will be bad news.
> 
> I haven't read anything saying it can be used as a mouse emulator over Win
8 from the go.
> 
> I do wonder what happened to this:
> 
>
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/4tiitoo/nuia-eyecharm-kinect-to-eye-trac
king/ - the plan was for a $60 clip-on device and software to complement the
now very cheap to buy Kinect for Xbox 360. What a shame that fell through.
I'm guessing a big name or two felt threatened by it and got legal, but I
could be wrong.
> 
> Affordable off-the-shelf eye-gaze control over the mouse seems not too far
away now, but it's not here yet so far as I can see.
> 
> Barrie
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Thomas Westin 
> Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2014 1:07 AM
> To: IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List 
> Subject: [games_access] Tobii and SteelSeries team up to launch
eye-trackinggame controller
> 
> 
>
http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/03/tobii-steelseries-eye-tracking-game-acces
sory/
> 
> Download information for Engadget at http://www.engadget.com/apps/
> 
> 
> Kind regards,
> Thomas
> 
> (Sent from my mobile)
> _______________________________________________
> games_access mailing list
> games_access at igda.org
> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> The main SIG website page is http://igda-gasig.org
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> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2014 11:39:36 +0100
> From: Thomas Westin <thomas at westin.nu>
> Subject: Re: [games_access] Tobii and SteelSeries team up to launch
> eye-trackinggame controller
> To: Barrie Ellis <oneswitch at gmail.com>, IGDA Games Accessibility SIG
> Mailing List <games_access at igda.org>
> Message-ID: <880A27C8-1233-46ED-8B42-E104C3F88E97 at westin.nu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
> 
> Hi Barrie,
> 
> Yes I agree, it may make games more inaccessible due to poor design, but
then again that is true of any solution. However, I think that if
eye-tracking is catching on as a mainstream hardware, it will be possible to
have game developers implementing support for it (due to return on
investment). Tobii tech is used for a wide range of applications and having
mouse control should definitely be included in this as well. I can?t imagine
why they would not. Let?s wait and see more details during CES (starting
today!). 
> 
> Best regards,
> Thomas
> 
> 6Jan 2014 kl. 10:53 skrev Barrie Ellis <oneswitch at gmail.com>:
> 
> > Hmm... Maybe this is what is needed to get the price of eye-trackers
down and into the mainstream, but it doesn't look like it will do anything
for game accessibility straight away. It could be just be another set of
controls to add to others that are used already. It could make games even
less accessible to many. I guess a few people will make interesting
gaze-only games which would be great, but if it uses closed proprietary
interface/software that will be bad news.
> > 
> > I haven't read anything saying it can be used as a mouse emulator over
Win 8 from the go.
> > 
> > I do wonder what happened to this:
> > 
> >
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/4tiitoo/nuia-eyecharm-kinect-to-eye-trac
king/ - the plan was for a $60 clip-on device and software to complement the
now very cheap to buy Kinect for Xbox 360. What a shame that fell through.
I'm guessing a big name or two felt threatened by it and got legal, but I
could be wrong.
> > 
> > Affordable off-the-shelf eye-gaze control over the mouse seems not too
far away now, but it's not here yet so far as I can see.
> > 
> > Barrie
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > From: Thomas Westin
> > Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2014 1:07 AM
> > To: IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List
> > Subject: [games_access] Tobii and SteelSeries team up to launch
eye-trackinggame controller
> > 
> >
http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/03/tobii-steelseries-eye-tracking-game-acces
sory/
> > 
> > Download information for Engadget at http://www.engadget.com/apps/
> > 
> > 
> > Kind regards,
> > Thomas
> > 
> > (Sent from my mobile)
> > _______________________________________________
> > games_access mailing list
> > games_access at igda.org
> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> > The main SIG website page is http://igda-gasig.org
> > _______________________________________________
> > games_access mailing list
> > games_access at igda.org
> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> > The main SIG website page is http://igda-gasig.org
> 
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