Maryland company Hillcrest Labs filled Wednesday a patent infringement suit against Nintendo saying that the company used a technology very similar to the one developed by them in creating the Wiimote, one of the key features that led to Wii's popularity.

Hillcrest Labs considers that Nintendo has infringed four of the company's patents. The strange thing is that two of them were filed after Nintendo had launched the Wii console in the United States, and that these two patents had been approved only a few days before the company filed the suit. For a person not very familiar with what the law says regarding this sort of matters, the whole thing certainly looks odd.

Taking into consideration that Nintendo has recently become the best selling console of its generation in the United States, it might be possible that Hillcrest Labs is only trying to make a few money out of the Japanese company's success.

What Hillcrest Labs demanded was that the authorities would ban the shipping of the Wii console in the United States, and that Nintendo should pay them some money. The exact amount was not made public.

The price of Nintendo's shares fell a little bit, but experts consider that there is no reason to worry about the company losing its American market. They believe that Hillcrest Labs will get a few million dollars from Nintendo at most.

The Japanese company was recently found guilty of infringing some patents of Texas-based company Anavision, and was ordered to pay $21 million in damages, although Anavision asked for $50 million. Nintendo appealed the decision.