I want to use the psp joystick in my project. I plan to make it a kit and sell it eventually. Can I be sued? I have seen products use the ipod female connector as their products connector, but it was a Chinese device. The only reason I want to use it is because of its low cost and low profile. Standard joystick parts(like the one sold by sparkfun) are too large for what I am making (and the cap makes it worse). I found a decent low profile joystick on digikey but they cost 13$ in single quantities and only go down to ~7$ in quantities of 1000. If you know of a part similar to what I am looking for or any thoughts would be helpful. Thanks.
Maybe something similar to this:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc … ts_id=9426
And no, they can’t sue you for using a joystick from the same supplier as they do. If, however you were to steal the design of their board, or copy the software that runs the PSP, then you can bet Sony would come after you in a hurry.
[Edit: Forgot to add-- I am not a lawyer. Legal advice from engineers is like engineering advice from Lil Wayne. (Useless)]
dcollier86:
I want to use the psp joystick in my project. I plan to make it a kit and sell it eventually. Can I be sued? I have seen products use the ipod female connector as their products connector, but it was a Chinese device. The only reason I want to use it is because of its low cost and low profile. Standard joystick parts(like the one sold by sparkfun) are too large for what I am making (and the cap makes it worse). I found a decent low profile joystick on digikey but they cost 13$ in single quantities and only go down to ~7$ in quantities of 1000. If you know of a part similar to what I am looking for or any thoughts would be helpful. Thanks.
The ipod connector is not an apple design, they used someone elses connector 
I dont think you’ll be sued, its not like they patented it? But just in case hold small quantities of final boards if something goes wrong you wont lose much.