Videogame console manufacturers are once again under legal fire, and this time it's not just one company, it's all three of the big boys. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are being sued by Texas-based Fenner Investments for infringing on the company's patent number 6,297,751 for a "low-voltage joystick port interface."

The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and seeks damages and an injunction against Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo for each company's willful infringement of the patent.

The patent in question was filed for in 1998 and awarded in 2001. It is described as "a low power port which interfaces a typical 5 Volt joystick peripheral device with a lower power computer port. The low-voltage joystick port interface includes a bidirectional buffer circuit and a pulse generator which, together, generate a digital pulse signal, representing a joystick coordinate position, based on an input analog measurement signal."

Lawsuits are familiar occurrences to all three console manufacturers, with Sony's court battles against Immersion Corporation over rumble technology - which incidentally has yet to be settled - being the most recent similar case. A quick Google search for Fenner Investments meanwhile churned out almost zero info save for two other patent infringement cases brought up by the company - one against Juniper Networks and the other against Alcatel.