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Activision Blizzard Sued For Patent Infringement Over WoW, CoD

Posted by Soulskill on from the good-luck-with-that dept.

New submitter thunderdanp writes with news that a company called Worlds Inc. has filed a patent suit against Activision Blizzard, targeting World of Warcraft and the Call of Duty series. The patents in question describe a "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space." Worlds Inc. is quite glad that "their" technology has "helped the businesses of virtual worlds gaming and the sale of virtual goods to grow into a multibillion-dollar industry" — but now they want a cut.

15 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. First sentence of the first article by Roobles · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Worlds Inc. filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, Inc., Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and Activision Publishing, Inc. in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on March 30, 2012."

    1. Re:First sentence of the first article by Fned · · Score: 5, Funny

      Wow.

      They REALLY don't know what they're doing.

    2. Re:First sentence of the first article by Grond · · Score: 4, Informative

      The law regarding venue has shifted in the past few years and it is now much harder to stay in the Eastern District of Texas, especially if both the plaintiff and defendant have only a nominal presence there (e.g. their products are sold there via the internet or they have a couple of retail outlets). In re Volkswagen of Am., Inc., 545 F.3d 304 (5th Cir. 2008); also see In re TS Tech. USA Corp., 551 F.3d 1315 (Fed. Cir. 2008); In re Genentech, Inc., 566 F.3d 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2009); In re Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., 587 F.3d 1333 (Fed. Cir. 2009); In re Nintendo Co., 589 F.3d 1194 (Fed. Cir. 2009); In re Zimmer Holdings, Inc., 609 F.3d 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2010); In re Acer Am. Corp., 626 F.3d 1252 (Fed. Cir. 2010); In re Microsoft Corp., 630 F.3d 1361 (Fed. Cir. 2011).

      Anyway, the Eastern District of Texas's reputation as a pro-patentee district is a little undeserved. The statistics on that aren't super strong. For example, here are the patentee win rates among various popular districts, taken from Andrei Iancu and Jay Chung, Real Reasons the Eastern District of Texas Draws Patent Cases—Beyond Lore and Anecdote, 14 SMU Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. 299 (2011).

      District Jury Trial Win Rate
      E.D. Virginia 79%
      M.D. Florida 77%
      N.D. Illinois 74%
      E.D. Texas 73%
      C.D. California 73%
      W.D. Wisconsin 71%
      N.D. California 66%
      D. Minnesota 65%
      D. New Jersey 64%
      D.Delaware 61%
      S.D. New York 53%

      (NB: That's the jury trial win rate; less than 3% of patent cases end with a jury verdict, so don't think these stats show that patentees win patent cases left and right.)

      As you can see, the Eastern District of Texas is only a little above the average there. Its affirmance rate at the Federal Circuit is similarly middle-of-the-pack, and it's also not the fastest district by a long shot, with an average time to jury verdict of almost 29 months, compared to Eastern Virginia and Western Wisconsin with 12 and 13 month pendencies, respectively.

    3. Re:First sentence of the first article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      FWIW, the judge that made East Texas famous for it's patent rocket docket has retired (about 6 months ago). So not only is it not the patent-friendly court it used to be, but that particular judge no longer serves as well.

    4. Re:First sentence of the first article by SadButTrue · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Horrible statistical assumptions here. To compare success rates only, is to assume that the quality of the complaints in all districts had the same distribution. For the sake of argument lets say that 100% of the frivolous cases were filed in E. Texas and 0% in S. NY. You can plainly see that success rate alone would tell you nothing. I understand that this is not the case, the numbers are simply meant to illustrate the assumption being made.

      In real terms there is reason to believe that there is indeed a skew in the validity of the cases brought however. How much? I have no idea. Perhaps a better statistic would be the number or trials verdicts that have been overturned?

      --
      grape - the GNU free, open source rape
  2. How did they get a patent... by Zakabog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How did they even get a patent for this? They basically described every multiplayer video game for the past 20 years.

    1. Re:How did they get a patent... by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's what I thought at first - but the submitter linked to the wrong patent(s). They have several dating all the way back to the mid 90's that at least predate any commercial 3D MMORPGs.

      Not saying they aren't stupid patents, but at the least they were not in fact stupid enough to try to sue their prior art...

    2. Re:How did they get a patent... by jd · · Score: 4, Informative

      Everything but the 3D aspect was done in AberMUD (which used a 2D graphical interface in a dedicated client). Basic GUI-driven avatar-based multi-player interactions via specialized clients can be traced back to XTrek at least (XTank didn't use clients per-se, since the server transmitted X protocol commands to the client display), since avatars could directly interact and players could chat via a console.

      In terms of 3D interactions, Second Life was hardly the first. Alpha World was earlier and even that was derived from earlier attempts.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

      Aha! Yes, Worlds Inc was responsible for Alpha World. That makes sense, and certainly Alpha World has a legitimate claim to being the direct ancestor of WoW, etc, and the platform that developed all of the technology used by Second Life, ad nausium. It's a push for them to claim the sole rights to MMORG Virtual Realities, though.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  3. They still exist but in Ghost Form by Shikaku · · Score: 3, Interesting

    http://www.worlds.com/

    It's mostly empty now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqel0k0NzNU has a short walk around of something before Second Life came around, and that still runs well on 56k.

  4. Prior Art by Nos9 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is this obscure game called Everquest that does all of the described elements of the patents. Everquest released March 16th, 1999. The aforementioned patent was filed March 19th, 1999.

  5. They are already prepared to lose. by Jeng · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I see that they made a spinoff company to litigate with so that when they lose they don't lose the shirts off their back when they lose, which they will.

    --
    Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
  6. A time limit needed by Grayhand · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's obvious that the lawsuits are ridiculous but what's most ridiculous is they are allowed to file after this many years. Usually there's a three year cut off. These companies, and some of them are the majors, sit back and let the totals add up until there are businesses valued in the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to sue. It's a blatant way of preventing the offender from modifying their product to avoid being sued and to rack up as much damages as possible before filing. Some minor tweaks in WoW might have avoided the lawsuit so they sit quietly until the damages are massive then sue. Without reading the patents it's hard to say but some of their claims involve things that have been standard in gaming for more than 20 years. The biggest advance in WoW was faster computers and connections allowing multiple players to interact. Also how could it have "helped the businesses of virtual worlds gaming and the sale of virtual goods to grow into a multibillion-dollar industry" when the ones being sued were never aware of the patents in the first place. It's like patenting the wheel then keeping it to yourself then claiming the car companies stole your design.

  7. In 2008 they sued NC soft, and NCsoft settled. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/04/27/worlds-com-vs-ncsoft-lawsuit-settled/

    from the article:
    "Worlds.com president and sole full-time employee Thomas Kidrin has simply exhausted his resources. Kidrin was recently quoted as saying "if we do not develop any new projects, we would have to severely diminish our operations or halt them entirely,"

  8. Worlds Inc. is nothing but legal zombie, no IP... by kbonin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Those of us who worked and actually innovated in VR in the late 80s and early 90s have always been a little worried about Worlds, as they liked to run off to the patent office with all the ideas the collected from the rest of us. All of their patent claims existed in other products - even their first patents were an attempt to claim basic VR tech shown several years before by several groups, including the one I worked with (OnLive Traveler). There is plenty of prior art to invalidate these patents, but in our glorious patent system it will cost millions to do so. And like SCO, their legal zombie remains keep trying to extend old claims and collect something for the little invalid patent portfolio that was passed on when they shut down. The software patent apocalypse continues....

  9. Re:Worlds Inc. is nothing but legal zombie, no IP. by Grond · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is plenty of prior art to invalidate these patents, but in our glorious patent system it will cost millions to do so.

    Requesting an ex parte reexamination costs $2,520, plus a fairly modest amount for a patent attorney to put together the request. The Patent Office takes it from there, and any litigation is typically stayed pending the result. Worlds' patent portfolio appears to be pretty small, only five patents, so all five could be thrown into reexam for not a lot of money. For a more hands-on approach there's inter partes reexamination, though it is a bit more expensive, but still cheaper than litigation. Litigation is not the only way to address a potentially invalid patent, depending on the defenses one plans to raise (i.e. not all possible defenses are available in reexamination).