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Yahoo! Sues Xfire Game Browser

Posted by Zonk on from the what-a-coincidence dept.

Gamespot has the word that Yahoo! has filed a lawsuit against XFire, just two months after Yahoo!'s acquisition of the All-Seeing Eye, a similar game matching program. However, the lawsuit seems to revolve around the Yahoo! developed GameProwler. The program allows instant messaging users to see if buddies are currently playing games. From the article: "As this complaint is just one week old, no 'next steps' are certain. Lawyers familiar with patent law have told GameSpot a case like this could cost up to $2 million to defend and take up to two years to fully adjudicate."

2 of 26 comments (clear)

  1. obligatory prior art post by bersl2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know I've seen, at the very least, the old Gamespy program do this (i.e., keep a list of user names and whether they are playing on a server).

    Anybody got a link to the text of the patent?

  2. Past Employee\Prior art by qad · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From the article, it looks like there are two problems:

    1)Kirmese, one of the Xfire's management, worked for Yahoo and came up with the patent in question while in Yahoo's employment.

    2)Whether the implementation of connecting gamers through messenger programs under patent 6,699,125 is really enforceable.

    Yahoo is concerned about a former employee using an implementation of connecting gamers together through a messenging service. Somehow, I suspect the patent itself might fall within prior art. The patent was awarded in 2004, and I seem to remember other examples of using messenging services to get games going.