Microsoft apply for patent on a magic wand

I've been reading a draft introduction to our forthcoming Open University post graduate IT law course this afternoon. In the process of suggesting to the author that we might include a section on some of the Microsoft patent cases I came across one of the more interesting recent claims by the Redmond corporation. A magic wand no less, United States Patent Application number 20090121894:

"The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can facilitate rich interaction with and/or management of environmental components included in an environment. The architecture can exist in whole or in part in a housing that can resemble a wand or similar object. The architecture can utilize one or more sensor from a collection of sensors to determine an orientation or gesture in connection with the wand, and can further issue an instruction to update a state of an environmental component based upon the orientation. In addition, the architecture can include an advisor component to provide contextual and/or comprehensive guidance in an intuitive manner."

I expect the latest Harry Potter game on the Xbox is imminent or at least in advanced development with the latest movie due out in July. Coincidence that this patent comes to light now?

Looking around of course Slashdot has picked it up and no doubt the tech news circuit will be doing likewise soon enough. Yup. In fact I'm a week behind the times - the application was published last Thursday and that news story the following day.