On Monday Sony Corp. said it was ordered by a U.S. court to halt sales of its PlayStation consoles in the key U.S. market and also pay $90 million in damages to Immersion Corp., a small U.S. tech company.

Sony's gaming unit, Sony Computer Entertainment, or SCE, said it would appeal the decision made by a California federal court in this patent infringement case.

For now, Sony will continue to sell PlayStation because the order, which covers both the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles, two game controllers, and 47 software titles, will not be going into effect before the appeal, said an SCE spokeswoman. She also added that Sony will be paying compulsory license fees to Immersion.

Immersion, which is a California-based developer of digital touch technologies, claimed that SCE infringed on its technology that makes a game controller vibrate in sync with certain actions in a game.

The $90 million that was awarded by the court is more than triple Immersion's total revenues of $23.8 million in 2004 and also represents two-thirds of the company's current value of close to $135 million.

The decision made by the court confirmed a ruling by a California jury last year that ordered Sony to pay just $82 million in the case. The total was raised to just over $90 million because of interest.