Worlds.com To Extend Virtual World Lawsuit To Second Life, WoW
FiveRings writes "BusinessInsider has a story about Worlds.com, a company that inherited the patent on virtual worlds from the Starlight Starbright Foundation and is taking it to court against NCSoft over the company's various MMOs. If successful, he will press on and sue the makers of Second Life and World of Warcraft as well. The article notes that the NCSoft case is being held in east Texas, which has been a favorable venue for patent trolls in the past."
IANAL, but I can't see where rattling your saber at a couple of big dogs while suing the small fish isn't begging to have some timely amicus briefs filed by the opposition.
I'm pretty sure that's why the more successful patent trolls get a bunch of smaller cases on the books as precedent before going after the guys with real money.
OK, send in the Nazgul, then:
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/pr.nsf/pages/news.20070416_virtualworlds.html
IBM has many projects related to virtual worlds.