By Bailey Quinonez

Staff Writer

ROCKVILLE - The fight goes on.

Two years after its introduction, the Nintendo Wii a popular computer game platform continues to be challenged by a Rockville company that claims Nintendo stole its technology.

Now representatives of the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington said they plan to investigate the allegations.

The ITC investigation comes in light of a lawsuit filed by Hillcrest Laboratories in Rockville on Aug. 20 with the ITC and the U.S. District Court in Maryland against the Japanese gaming company.

"As expected, the International Trade Commission signaled its intention to investigate the importation of Nintendo's Wii and Wii Remote based upon a complaint filed by Hillcrest Laboratories Inc.," said Nintendo of America spokesman Charlie Scibetta. "Nintendo has not yet had an opportunity to respond to the complaint and the commission has not made any determination on the merits of the case."

The Wii, the most popular product in the current game console generation, uses a pointing device and navigating interface display instead of the traditional wired controller. But according to Hillcrest officials, the Wii violates four of their patents. Three of the patents are related to the handheld three-dimensional pointing device and the fourth relates to the navigation interfaced display system that graphically organizes content for display on televisions.

On Sept. 17, the ITC announced that they would conduct an official investigation on the Wii system and accompanying remote controls. The investigation is expected to take approximately 15 months. However, if a violation is identified then the ITC has the authority to block imports of the Wii, as requested by Hillcrest according to court documents.

"By instituting this investigation, the ITC has not yet made any decision on the merits of the case," said ITC in a statement.

This is not the first patent-infringement complaint that Nintendo has had to face since the release of the Wii game console. Lawsuits concerning the Wii in Texas, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Delaware are pending in federal courts. Nintendo is also currently facing a ban on the Wii Classic controller unless the $21 million verdict won by Anascape of Tyler, Texas, can be overturned in appeals court.

But Nintendo said that they plan to fight the claims made by Hillcrest. "After a judge is assigned to preside over the investigation, Nintendo will have the opportunity to present its case," said Scibetta. "Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and believes that none of its products infringes the Hillcrest Laboratories patents. Nintendo intends to vigorously defend this action."

"While Hillcrest Labs has a great deal of respect for Nintendo and the Wii, Hillcrest Labs believes that Nintendo is in clear violation of its patents and has taken this action to protect its intellectual property," said Hillcrest officials in response to the lawsuit filed in August. Officials said that they would not comment on the investigation.

Hillcrest's technology, called Freespace, senses motion in three dimensions and translates human motions onto on-screen cursor movement. According to the Rockville-based company, they have been using the Freespace technology since 2001 and have 29 patents worldwide along with over 100 filed related patents.