Friday, April 13th 2012
Activision Blizzard Being Sued for Virtual World Infringement
ShackNews is reporting Activision Blizzard is being sued by Worlds Inc., for violating a patent on virtual worlds. The firm claims that games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft violate its patent, and are requesting "fair compensation." The patent covers a "system and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space," reports Games Industry International. That may sound broad, but the company did manage to get an undisclosed settlement out of NCSoft for City of Heroes in 2010. "Technologies created by Worlds have helped the businesses of virtual worlds gaming and the sale of virtual goods to grow into a multi-billion dollar industry," said Worlds CEO Thom Kidrin. "While we are pleased to see that the gaming industry and its rapidly growing customer base have enthusiastically embraced our patented technologies, we deserve fair compensation for their use." No response yet from Activision Blizzard.
Source:
ShackNews
54 Comments on Activision Blizzard Being Sued for Virtual World Infringement
NCSoft may have just tossed out a "no contest" plea (not admitting guilt) and just paid them off to prevent further litigation costs. This would not actually be a court decided "precedence".
A/B has the money to fight, so the outcome is still up in the air from several standpoints.
I thought that's the way it worked, or at least how it used to work.
Filing date of this patent is Nov., 1996
Also I just checked Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) and they didnt even trademark the name until 2001.Thats just the name. The art will always be protected. Its the concept that isn't. If it was already filed under that description they would have never been able to patent it. That what patent lawyers are for. Ultima Online: Shattered Legacy could not hold a patent with anything close to the same description as Worlds Inc. or it never would have been filed.
The problem as i see it is not if Ultima was patented or not, is that there is a case here for prior art, the game it self wasn't done in a couple of months, it took longer than that. The thing is that this Patent of Worlds inc. is almost the same thing as how Ultima online was made to work but with "three-dimensional graphical" concept. It shouldn't be about who patents what first but who did it first. but oh well, if you think its alright for a company that could have easily saw what was being done by Ultima Online(we will never know) and thought about patenting it first without doing anything and now own the whole Virtual World 3D concept then that is alright, i think is wrong. but hey, i could be wrong too. :D
googled intersting read with statements from them, its bullshit though if the patents just been allowed 23 feb 2012 how the hell could any of the companies have known they were infringeing??
im no patent genius but this sounds stupid, and something needs to be done about patent trolling firms and their Vague as or all encompassing patents ,its bullshit daylight robbery and its all us bottom of the ladder customers who end up paying,
sonys virtual world must also be shaking in its boots ps3 land or weva its called
worlds inc looks totally shit too DMC world my asss and no where can i see anything bar virtual people that the two share, have they added a waffle lounge to cod without me knowing
hang on a min ,theirs a lot of central server nonesense in that patent and cod afaik doesnt use that for games ,players host
Looking at their only product, it's not even the same concept as a concurrent 3D environment similar to WoW. You have to download separate areas and install them yourself. Another case that highlights what a joke patenting concepts is.
EDIT: Look out Bethesda... Scrolls anyone?
I honestly don't think that Bethesda ever intended to win (as it was a pretty loose suit), but to have it on record that they were actively defending their IP, which is important in the event later cases come up.
I wonder if any white knight WoW player is going to do something drastic to protect their stomping grounds. That would be epic if there is a news story about some crazy fat guy getting arrested for driving to these guys office and beating the piss out of them while dressed in cardboard armor and weilding some type of foam weaponry.:roll:
Worlds Inc. would have had to been taking games to court a long time ago for their patent to stand. Even then, their patent might be seen as too broad and disallowing competition.
In order for a patent to stand, the patent holder must defend it. There's many cases where Worlds, Inc. did not making the case that it is public.
Air Warrior III Millennium version was published by EA.
PS; I played Air Warrior on the Commodore Amiga 500 (Rev 6A motherboard, AmigaOS/Workbench 1.3.2).
SGI Dogfight has multiplayer over UDP in 1986. SGI added IP multicast to Dogfight in 1989.
I think there should be a limited time to claim and some patents should not be allowed just for the sake of encouraging other companys small or large to be able to produce some thing for the market.
I bet NSoft just took it in the ass to save time and money and i bet they did not have much cash to burn either if any back then.
I hope World inc get in their ass this time around just for being morons.
The 2002 version by Bioware probably does not qualify as massive. It did support 96 players at any one time, which was a lot, but not massive. Battlefield 1942, released the same year, supported 64.