RandyT, The legal stuff I was talking about had little to do with any patents on the joystick itself. The concern seemed to have been with the TRON franchise, which is still owned by Disney. No company could market a product using any reference to the TRON franchise without obtaining specific rights to do so from Disney. This would hardly be economically feasible for any company in the arcade/amusement business. Disney are pretty heavy hitters. Having clarified this, there still remain the rights purchased from Midway by HAPP controls that I mentioned in my earlier post.
I contacted HAPP about this and requested to know if there were any plans to re-produce the original TRON restrictor (which is a VERY simple swap with the stock restrictor on the HAPP heavy duty 8-WAY). The response I received was that yes, they could produce it (actually them - there are two) but there were no plans to do so. Re-tooling costs and the subsequent addition to the price of the stick was unjustifiable relative to the size of the market. Hope this clarifies my earlier post.