Activision/Blizzard being sued for virtual world infringement
Activision Blizzard is being sued by Worlds Inc. The company claims games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft violate its patent for "enabling users to interact in a virtual space."
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."
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Shacknews
replySteve Watts posted a new article, Activision/Blizzard being sued for virtual world infringement.
Activision Blizzard is being sued by Worlds Inc. The company claims games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft violate its patent for "enabling users to interact in a virtual space."-
Oh software patents, what will you do next?
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This patent is filed in fucking 2009. World of Warcraft had been out 5 years by then.
And from skimming the claims, it seems to be about moving an avatar in a virtual world and another client seeing that via a server. This has prior art going back quite a long time I'd say. If it has to be three dimensional I guess at least back to Duke 3D?
Fucking bullshit.-
Patent # 7945856
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Published 1996
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_(video_game)
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are you sure?
The smaller firm can count this as the second time they've filed such suit. 2008 saw them filing suit against NCSoft for the game City of Heroes. That case was dismissed in 2010 after an undisclosed settlement was attained.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-04-06-activision-blizzard-sued-for-patent-infringement-of-virtual-worlds-usage
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Unfortunately for that patent, there is significant prior art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights_%28MMORPG%29 that's ignoring all the MUDs/BBS games that have been around since the 1980s and 70s
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there's prior art because that joke is like 10 years old
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jesus. I say if you don't do anything with your patent you can't sue. that'd be nice.
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that would make NPEs sad :(
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I've got the prior art right here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everquest -
Fucking lol. Watching this get squashed will be entertaining.
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if you had an idea... and wanted to patent it... are you saying you wouldnt want a slice of the pie that someone made from your ingredients and didnt offer you any ?
Young people wont understand.. I get that...-
really makes you think...
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By the way do you actually believe that anyone, ANYONE actually consulted or somehow made use of that patent when coming up with a 3d game, seriously
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I'll do the work and you get the monies!
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"Young people won't understand", is probably the best part of this post.
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I agree.
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There's no way I'm going to defend our terrible patent system, but it is true that lay-people often misunderstand what patents actually cover. The abstract and the description in a patent really don't mean very much.
The only legally significant portion of a patent is the list of claims. These are written in a particular legal style which is a pain to decipher, but often a patent will appear to have a very broad scope but when you get down to the claims you discover that it is somewhat narrowly defined. Here's a link that might help: http://www.bpmlegal.com/howtopat5.html
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I would like to sue the entire Human Race on my patented method of breathing. Since you all use it, you must all accept your court summons. I will gladly take an undisclosed amount instead to get this over with. BUT! Should you keep breathing in a manner that keeps you alive without compensating me... SO HELP ME!
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Does that mean I'm violating the patent right now by posting this?
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By: ]aratex[ x
Don't patent looking, you're loosing out on a lot of possible revenue from blind people!
Next step: "a system for expanding and contracting the diaphragm which causes the lungs to intake environmental gases"
Sorry, but that idea was taken already. Patent denied.
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Since Shacknews doesn't really want to put any details in their blog articles. There is a good article on Forbes about this.
Basically they filed these patents in 1995, for an avatar based chat room. Basically server based filtering so you dont' get info for characters you're not interacting with. Amazing.. almost like real life? How does this shit get patented?
So basically ANY online game where you have an avatar and you interact with other people online would be affected by this patent... uhm... great
I hope Activision smashes these clowns into dust. -
"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."
Erm...no, you don't.
You can't patent an idea, it's rediculous. Blizzard deserve the props for WoW, has nothing to do with this daft, spongey company no one's ever heard of. Saying that they DESERVE some cash is ludicrous, they haven't created anything.
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