Activision Blizzard Sued For Patent Infringement Over WoW, CoD 194
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.
They still exist but in Ghost Form (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.worlds.com/ [worlds.com]
It's mostly empty now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqel0k0NzNU [youtube.com] has a short walk around of something before Second Life came around, and that still runs well on 56k.
Prior Art (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.
Worlds Inc. is nothing but legal zombie, no IP... (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....