Nintendo's legal department must be busy. It seems that every month or two a new patent suit pops up against the video game giant. This time it comes from UltimatePointer, the makers of the Upoint presentation remote. The company claims the Nintendo Wii remote infringes on the Upoint patent, and also claims a number of game retailers have infringed on the patent by selling the device.

Gamasutra reports that UltimatePointer argues Nintendo has "directly infringed the patent with the unauthorized selling of its Wii remote hardware." The company also implicates retailers like GameStop and Best Buy, and is requesting damages along with attorney and court fees.

The Upoint device isn't currently being sold by UltimatePointer, since it's undergoing testing. The patent (7,746,321) was filed in May 2005. This would make it precede Nintendo's public introduction of the Wii Remote device, but Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has said that internally, the device was settled long before then. "By [late 2004], we had come up with the remote controller's wand shape and the nunchuk analog controller attachment," he told Business Week in 2006. "We also decided on the motion sensor, infrared pointer, and the layout of buttons."

Earlier this month, a similar suit was filed by the company ThinkOptical for its Wavit remote.