The MMO Gaming Industry faces a MASSIVE lawsuit.

[Jstreet]

Spoiler: Article

AGIPNEWS6644

3/1/2009 06:16 GMT
ag-IP-news
Worlds.com Sues NCSoft for Infringing Key Virtual Worlds Patent


SUFFERN, NY - General Patent Corporation (GPC), a leading patent licensing and enforcement firm, announced in a press release that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against NCSoft Corp. of Austin, TX on behalf of its client, Worlds.com Inc.

The lawsuit (Case 6:08-cv-00508) was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division.

Worlds.com Inc., of Brookline, MA, owns US Patent No.7,181,690 titled “System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space” (the ‘690 Patent). The Patent relates to computer architecture for a three-dimensional graphical multi-user interactive virtual world system.

Such systems are utilized in Massive Multi-Player Online Games (MMORPG) of the type known as Graphical Multi-Dimension (GMUD) games, which provide a graphical representation of the player’s character (avatar) wherein movement of the character in virtual space alters what the character views.

General Patent Corporation has represented Worlds.com Inc. since 2002 as its exclusive licensing agent.

“We had to protect our client’s Intellectual Property,” GPC’s Chairman and CEO Alexander Poltorak said.

“However, we welcome a dialog with NCSoft and other MMO game vendors,” he added.

NCSoft Corp., a game developer with US offices in Austin, TX, is the purveyor of such games as City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, Lineage, and Lineage II, which have been identified in the complaint as infringing the Worlds’ Patent.

“We intend to vigorously enforce Worlds' Intellectual Property Rights and look forward to a speedy and amicable resolution of this matter,” Stephen Roth of Lerner David Littenberg Krumholz & Mentlik LLP, the lead counsel in the case noted.

“Worlds.com has been a pioneer in the field of Virtual Worlds since the early nineties,” Worlds' CEO Thom Kidrin stated.

“We are pleased to see that the technology we developed is now widely used by MMO game developers. At the same time, we deserve a fair compensation for the use of our patented technology,” he continued.

Worlds.com Inc. of Brookline, MA is a leader and pioneer in the development and delivery of 3D content and technology on the internet.

Along with this small article there are others in which Worlds state they if successful they intend on going after big titles such as World of Warcraft.

Discuss!

My opinion:
I believe this is complete and utter bullshit after research Worlds history and why they had the patent created. They've basically used a very vague and broad term and are trying to squeeze money out of the major gaming companies. This is why they started small to see if they can stand in court with this patent vs a smaller company with less effective lawyers.

If they do succeed you can expect a few things:
- Subscriptions for online gaming are going to increase. We're not just talking MMORPGs.

- Stock holders are going to sell while they can make a profit and the gaming stock market is going to decline.

- Game makers will start going back to concentrating on making more innovative single player games and the Offline RPG creation will start to increase again.

If it is about games, try putting it in the forum titled "video games" please ^_^

 

[SolstICE]

time will tell. hope they win if the other companies did break the law. everyone copies everyone elses types of games these days for a quick buck

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Well, the problem that Worlds faces is that they waited so long to file a lawsuit. If they had sued the first game to copy them, they would have won for sure. Now, though, they've waited so long that what they had a patent for has become an industry standard. I have a feeling that the ruling will be either a)They waited too long and it has become an industry standard or b)They waited too long to try to bait companies to make the infringement.

 

[shadowmimiiru]

The patent is far too vague, and I'm pretty sure I read about this company trying this before with another company and failing miserably.

 

[Jstreet]

The sad thing is that Worlds is actually intimidating some of the company higher-ups. Activision Blizzard's(ATVI) stock just dropped significantly due to an insider stock holder selling 2,000,000 shares and that costs ATVI roughly $20,000,000. If they get what they want you're going to see some of the minor gaming companies (that haven't already) start considering bankruptcy and most likely getting bidded on.

 

[e]

I doubt this will ever come to pass; like someone said above, the patent is far too vague and should never have been issued. Imo, I don't think this will ever actually affect us; rather, they'll either ignore it or settle out of court.

 

[Cruelty]

if i was head honcho of a MMO company, such as blizzard, and someone came up to me threatening to sue me over this pre-historic, generic patent i would just kick him in the ass.

also i dont play MMOs so i dgaf if they stop making them.

please stop making posts like this.
yrs, mawk

 

[Feldschlacht IV]

This is very unlikely to ever pass. It just sounds like legalistic bluffing to me.

 

[Ter13]

Unfortunately, the idea is so broad, that it cannot ever hope to pass.

Really, it's like trying to claim ownership of 3D graphics. I had a similar situation a few years back. XSI Corporation tried to file a cease and desist against me because I wrote a converter that would make one of their products (Crosswalk) completely worthless to the modding community.

I wrote a python plugin that converted XSI meshes into BLEND format, and back again. They claimed that I wrote a product that infringed on their rights as a development studio, and reverse engineered proprietary software.

I got them to stop by bringing up the discussion with a lawyer about public domain. You cannot really defend a patent on an idea based on communications media. You can patent a design, or a blueprint, but not an idea really.

This case will fail. They patented an idea that is well known, shared computing in the 3D environment over the internet.

If they were to have patented this idea, and it were a legal patent, the entire game development industry would be at fault of violation of the patent.

You can't patent this vague technology. It's just not lawful.

 

[Jking]

they are going to hit very very large brick in the wall when they attempt going after Blizzard and the company that amde second life. (they have revealed hints of those two company's being their targets if they are successful with NCsoft