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Zynga and Blizzard Sued Over Game Patent
eldavojohn writes "Thinking about developing a game involving a 'database driven online distributed tournament system?' Well, you had better talk to Walker Digital or risk a lawsuit, because Walker Digital claims to have patented that 'invention' back in 2002. The patent in question has resulted in some legal matters for the makers of 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 and 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: World at War, Blur, Wolfenstein, DJ Hero 2, Golden Eye 007, World of Warcraft and its expansions, Mafia Wars, and many others.' Walker Digital (parent company of Priceline.com) said it's not sure how much damages are going to be, and requested that through discovery in the court. If you think Walker Digital is not a patent troll, check out their lawsuit from two months ago against Facebook for using privacy controls Walker Digital claims to have patented. It would seem that any online competitive game that uses a database to select and reward contestants in a tournament could potentially fall under this patent — of course, those with the deepest coffers will be cherrypicked first."
Software patents confuse the hell out of me. I mean, reading the patent abstract, it sounds like it could apply to any of thousands of database driven multiplayer tournament systems (games).
Case in point: I write database driven business applications, and is essentially just reading + writing data, similar to the abstract. Objects have statuses (scores) which pivot around a status hierarchy (levels) which determines if an object can move to the next level (game progression). Certain actions and events are even restricted by the ownership of certain properties and items (inventory/magic items/stats). This abstract could apply to many different softwares.
It pisses me off how this abstract reads just like it's own name. I wonder if it was filed by drunk 5-year olds...
Blizzard really don't have to go far for prior art on this at all. Starcraft 1 had a system that was essentially the same as Starcraft 2's ladder system. You could choose to play a match in the Blizzard ladder system and you'd be ranked and the results stored on the Blizzard database server. The Starcraft 1 ladder was removed in later patches as no one was using it towards the end (they were playing on other custom laddering systems) but it was there in the beginning and it was very similar to what's in Starcraft 2.
It's actually quite funny that they've chosen to sue the one company that has the most prior art on this.
of "database driven online distributed tournament systems" that were popular even before 2002....
- utopia
- archmage
what else?
I hate patent trolls, but I hate that Farmville shit I get spammed with even worse. I hope the troll and Zynga both spend millions on lawyers and then settle for peanuts.
but not before they FAIL!
Diablo2 and Battle.net may well cover this more than completely
If I were the judge presiding over this case, the first thing I'd do is ask Walker Digital to explain why it took eight years before they decided to start suing publishers/developers, despite there being a number of games released earlier which supposedly infringed on their patent. If they couldn't reasonably explain the delay in such a way as to allay my suspicious that they simply wanted to hold off litigation until they had a lot of guys to go after for maximum returns, I'd tell them (in legal speak of course) to fuck off.
But I am no lawyer of course, and I have no idea if it would be as simple as that.
The fact that people set up patent trolling firms isn't the problem. It's the laws that have gotten out of hand, too far away from the original intentions, and not keeping up to date with technological advancements that make PT firms a viable play.
No idea what to do about it, though. The problem isn't confined to one country, and even if it was, the lawyers are influential in congress, and ofc they make money off these lawsuits. It's a tax on innovation.
MUD Essex University 1978-1987ish - kept a record of your level (thus a database), being rewarded with increased abilities every level until you got to Witch/Wizard level, and allowed remote play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/ecsjun84.htm
Obviously it depends on exactly how the claims of the patent are phrased, but from the abstract it would appear that this constitutes substantial prior art nearly 20 years before the 2001 filing date.
A quick look at some of the claims show it would probably be prior art against some of them. The game stored level and sex, (claims 1-2), it was a game of skill (claim 3). Claims 8,9,10 appear to be fairly generic method of interacting with any remote game, leaving only the association of payment with the game. I'm sure online games needing payment were present in the 80's too
In summary, the patent appears to have been awarded for something that is obvious and where prior art already exists
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
And this is the problem with even doing business in a country that allows such abstract "patents", especially software patents. You don't need to be in the patent business, or invention, or even be in an area where you expect to have to research patents for running a business, and you don't even need to actually violate any valid patent - you can still sued out of existence if you're not big enough to fend such things off.
It's not the "yet-another-big-company-sued-for-obviousness" stories that are the problem - how many tiny little outfits just settled out of court instead of fight something they *know* they should win? You don't point at Google first, you take lots of small companies and get their settlements in order to provide you with some authenticity and then go for the big boys, and you'll never hear about those small-fry that feel they have to pay up because it's too costly for them to annoy the patent-holders or defend against them in court.
Seriously - stop doing business in places that have software patents. It's a gamble that is going to cost you big if you are unlucky enough to step on a patent-troll's foot. I hereby patent "method to determine if a user of a game is in a country subject to software patent laws for the purpose of denial of access to such users", by the way.
They should have first sued people with less money so that they could set a precedent.
anyone else remember "trade wars," the popular BBS game from pre-internet gaming?
Seems that would be "prior art," though I'm not well versed in such matters.
If at first you don't succeed... sue those who have.
Reading the patent and going by the diagrams, but more importantly the background provided on page 11, it seems that the patent only applies where you charge for entry and pay cash prizes.
They have even in the background specifically provided examples of companies that do one but not the other:
"One of the companies providing games in this new environment is NTN Communications.. the game has a major drawback, however, in that there are no prizes awarded to players. The competitive drive is diminished when there is no prize for winning. It's like playing a game of poker without using money."
Page 12: "In the invented system, players pay entry fees to compete for substantial prizes in electronic tournaments. Unlike existing tournament systems, the present invention allows for the coordination of multiple tournaments, making each tournament part of a whole rather than a stand-alone tournament".
It seems therefore that they have explicitly recognised as prior art and do not cover in their patent tournament systems that do not have monetary prizes. Moreover, tournaments that do have cash prizes should be allowed as long as they are not multiple coordinated tournaments. This is simple enough because systems such as the Battle.net ranking is arguably not a tournament, but rather an entirely different system of determining player skill. You can therefore create independent tournaments based on the player skill score, or invitations, as long as the result from each tournament is not contributed back into the player skill score.
Those leeches deserve a present from orbit.., but is there a way to fight them ?
For starters, they are NOT USING their "inventions", only trolling. Or what about suing them back for extortion or unfair enrichment?
Compunet (Commodore 64 network, UK only) ran a copy of MUD on their DEC10 - it was GBP1.10/hour (on top of Compunet access) to play - definitely billable time...
See: http://www.mud.co.uk/muse/compunet_mud.htm
Patents are intended to protect Research & Development, so that those who spend millions, or billions, into research don't get it copied just like that without any chance of recovering the costs whatsoever. Without it, research and development become a much less lucrative field. We get hurt because in the end, very few bother with actually developing technology, and that hurts society.
I cannot picture a single situation where software patents actually help the society. It benefits very few and punishes the majority. The product should matter, not a theoretical idea behind it.
FTFY
I see no problem with patents for products which require large amount of tooling for prototypes. They're there to allow you to invent a product, and stop others from copying it once you've spent large amounts of time and money getting it to work.
I'd be fairly pissed off if I came up with some fantastic new aero engine, spent of thousands of pounds on the tooling to build a prototype, get it working as expected, only for Rolls Royce or General Electric to copy it. What incentive would there be for me, even if it was for the greater good?
As a programmer, I can see no rationale behind software patents. Luckily the UK-IPO appears to reject software patents, though it seems the courts can force them to be accepted.
Many (if not most) real research projects are backed or even fully financed by the government anyway. The little research that is actually done fully privately is pretty unimportant compared to the massive damage (high prices, keeping competition and further innovation away) that patents cause.
How often do things like your example happen? How often does it happen that companies like GE & Co. sue the living hell out of a tiny new company that might turn into a competitor one day?
See subject
Somebody please provide appropriate WoW, Farmville and car analogies for this matchup
I have to admit I'm torn by this story. Sure software patents are the bane of all that's fine and decent in the world, but Zynga is the bane of all that's fine and decent in gaming. So a part of me wants to see the two parties sue each other into oblivion... but then, I tend to like Blizzard's games... Sigh... why does the world have to be so darn complicated?
http://www.beanleafpress.com
If i am reading the patent correctly, it says database driven distributed tournament system. This would mean that while matchmakign is done with a database (centralized) it is ultimately a distributed system i.e. peer to peer? Wow and farmville etc are centralized so why are they suing them? perhaps because MMORPG's were less prolific before 2000 while matchmaking for p2p mplayer has been around for a long long time?
I wonder if anyone has tried or even contemplated suing the Patent Office for awarding overly broad and obvious patents. There would not be so much trouble if the Patent Office actually did their job and denied these kinds of patents.
How often do things like your example happen?
Obviously more often than you think: James Dyson, Trevor Baylis amongst others. What patents allow is for an inventor to protect his invention without the fear of a larger company taking his idea. They don't have to stifle innovation as they can be licensed.
How often does it happen that companies like GE & Co. sue the living hell out of a tiny new company that might turn into a competitor one day?
You've obviously completely missed my point, how can GE "sue the living hell out of a tiny new company" if that tiny company has taken a patent out on its invention?
I was simply responding to your comment that you "cannot picture a single situation where patents actually help the society.", which was a fairly sweeping statement. Just because patents can (and are) misused, it doesn't mean they have no place in society.
Apricot were mildly offended by the threat of legal action, since at the time they were purchasing the motherboards for their systems FROM IBM.
... hmmmm ... suspicious ..
I recall back in the 80s, when we were developing graphics displays that some bunch of lawyers in California bought up some IP, and turned up a patent for use of XOR function to put a cursor on a graphics screen, and use XOR to restore the graphics again when it moved. The patent predated IBM, HP and Sun's use on unix workstations by a few years. It sounded obvious to me at the time, but they got money out of it. What they didn't realise was that they should not have accepted the first offer from the three companies of $300,000 each - since all three companies had gone to the meeting with permission to spend $30M each.
It pisses me off how this abstract reads just like it's own name.
It goes even deeper than that. Here's a game called "Patent". Players submit a description of something obvious and already existing to a database drive online tournament. If they get in first before other players they are rewarded with points which allows them to submit more descriptions of something obvious and already existing. If they don't get their patent into the tournament first, they lose points to other players. The winner is the one to first manage to patent the idea of the universe and everything it contains.
Clearly Walker Digital have patented the concept of the game "Patents", and the patent office has breached that patent. Patents issued by the US patent Office are therefore invalid, including Walker Digital's patent. The who shebang disappears up its own fundamental and can be ignored by everyone of any sense.
Yep, its beautifully smart to sue Blizzard over this. They are only the first or second highest grossing video game company in the world. Think about it, World of Warcraft has approximately 12 million subscribers according to Blizzard. That's $14.99 x 12, 000, 000 = $179, 880, 000 per month, or $2, 158, 560, 000 a year, that's a little over $2 BILLION! That's ONE GAME and they bought Activision so they have many more. Your piddly little patent trolling is going to be a speedbump to them and they are going to make you feel small and insignificant, because you are. Better luck next time, and it won't be with the biggest producer of portable games in the world, Zynga, either. The only smart play they have is to settle out of court if offered. If I was Blizzard I wouldn't offer on general principle. I would bankrupt them and laugh in their faces.
Claim 1-3 cover all client server games with persistent data.
The oldest such game I know of is from 1971, but I'm sure there are examples predates that.
Claim 4-5 adds payment to that. That was not common on the early internet, but common on the for payment BBS's of the 80's.
Claim 6-7 adds "prizes" to the first claim, without defining the term. It would seem to cover any client-server game with a high-score
Claim 8-10 add a physical computer to the above claims: "No sir, this is not a software patent, it is a patent on software running on a computer. Totally different. Down with software patents!".
i hereby change the naming of my "database" to "datacase." there we go, problem solved. but wait, now my patent for "everything string based which runs on a database" wont do me much good. guess i shouldn't have opened my big mouth! i mean really, a patent on using databases for game rewards? are they serious? i suppose storing it all in an XML flat or excel would a way around it, but couldn't one argue that this is still a form of database - it is still a "place to store and manipulate data," what does the format matter?
The Patent Filing date is Jan 24 2001, meaning useful prior art is pre 2000 (12 months before filing date) - where did you get 1996 from?
As far as MUD is concerned, the original one (from 1978 onwards) is still available
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD
http://www.mud.co.uk/muse/home.htm
(I'm trying to work out if MUSE are alive - the site is up but seems to have been updated a decade ago)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
My point: patents are more often in the way than they actually reasonably protect someone. Especially big companies have a ton of patents at their disposal that they can use to sue others out of business. I fail to see the benefit for the society here.
We developed and released a few "database backed online tournament systems" years before this at Midway Games.
MTN (midway tournament network)
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Midway's+New+Coin-Op+Tournament+Network+Allows+Players+to+Compete+for...-a062017850
Wavenet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Rush_2049 So, STFU, GTFO Mr. Patent Pants.
It's more than your argument has. Your argument is basically "we don't know that ALL software patents are bad, because there may be a good one along soon".
On one hand I absolutely loath patent trolls. But on the other hand Blizzard's own behaviors makes me wish they get nailed, badly.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Canada looked at joining it's patent system with the US only to conclude that the US patent system is a joke. Yes, the official report used the word joke. The US patent system has since gotten worse
Obvious according to the US system is something that isn't already covered by another patent. Thus the person that got the patent for emoticons represented by graphics on mobile devices was not obvious since there wasn't already a patent for it. Where in the Canadian system it would have been considered obvious because doing something on a mobile device that is already done on a desktop is not considered to take much thought. Also in the Canadian system you can only patent an implementation of an idea, not the idea. If someone else came up with the implementation, you cannot patent it, this does not hold true in the US, you just have to be first to the patent office.
I mentioned about the US system getting worse, this is in response to the US Patent Office announcing that to speed up patent approval they are mostly only checking if the patent applications are correctly done as opposed to making sure they meet the requirements. They let the courts decide if the patent is valid. While this may seem immoral and subject to abuse, it is perfectly legal according to the US system.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Would it be Obvious to say that this patent is Obvious?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I might try and patent "A method to do something by using something else". That's a bit more specific than some patents, I could rake it in.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
One of the parts of my job that irks me is that I work for a company that does "damages discovery" for cases like this. Our firm gets hired to determine what the damages are. It is a complete load of crap the way they determine these awards. The fact that a company like Walker Digital can go to court without even knowing what they are using for in the first place just shows how broken the system really is. It fails any sanity check what so ever. It baffles my mind that a judge would not throw this out of court right away.
Judge, "You're telling me that YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOUR 'BUSINESS MODEL' IS WORTH?!"
Walker, "No your honor, we have no idea what our patent is worth."
Judge, "GTFO!"
Unfortunately the reality of the situation is that they will bring in some insanely high paid "experts" who will talk out of their ass and come up with a valuation in the millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. What will their valuation be based on? Absolutely nothing tangible. They make it up as they go. It isn't like they have any prior information to base it on. It all comes down to whatever the plaintiffs and the judge agree on. The defendant is SOL. It is not like Blizzard can say, "Your honor, WoW is worthless."
"of course, those with the deepest coffers will by cherrypicked first."
I would be surprised if that were to happen. A company like Activision has the resources to defend itself. A startup, however, usually doesn't. Rarely do you start with the big guy; instead it makes sense to try picking off the little guys first, since successful cases strengthen your hand to win future cases. These frivolous lawsuits can destroy small businesses, but the lawyers and board of Walker Digital won't care.
Obvious patent troll is obvious.
The recent Intellectual Ventures suits present just one example showing that the NPE (“patent troll”) business model is fast becoming dominant in the world of IP. Thomas Edison held over 1,000 patents, but practiced none of them. He invented, which is what he did best, and let others manufacture products from his inventions. If an inventor cannot sue for patent infringement and recover damages, they why should anyone invent anything? Only vigorous patent enforcement rewards inventors for their inventions and incentivizes others to invent.