The lights are on
On March 30, 2012, Worlds, Inc. sued Activision over alleged patent infringement. The former accuses the later of infringing on a variety of technologies filed as "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space."
Essentially, Worlds, Inc. is accusing Activision of violations with regard to Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. Our understanding is that Worlds, Inc. is claiming that it holds the patent for the way servers and user PCs and consoles facilitate player interaction.
Today, Activision has counter-sued claiming that Worlds, Inc.'s product, Worlds Player, infringes on two of its own patents. Those are U.S. Patent No. 6,014,145 ("Navigation with optimum viewpoints in three-dimensional workspace interactive displays having three-dimensional objects with collision barriers") and 5,883,628 ("Climability: property for objects in 3-D virtual environments").
Worlds Inc.'s lawsuit is still pending.
Our TakeI am going to try to make sense of this, so bear with me. Worlds Inc. appears to have sued Activision (and, oddly, no other publisher of online games that uses similar techniques to enable online play) because players can interact online. Activision has discovered that Worlds, Inc.'s Worlds Player includes features like collision detection and climbing.
Yes, it appears that these lawsuits are about running around online with other players and bumping into and climbing stuff while doing it. Sometimes the law is a funny thing.
aren't they already in court for the whole buy-out thing?
Patent trolls suck. Good luck, Activision! Shove them off the tallest cliff you can find!
Worlds Inc seems to be acting like a patent troll
Attorneys love this stuff, and drag it out.
The patent system is such a waste of time now. Its just a way for companies to sue each other now. An individual who gets a patent won't have the resources to fight a company that infringes on it anyway, especially not an overseas company.
Ah patents, such a myriad of stupidity to prevent theft of intellectual property which becomes useless after a set amount of time anyway...
Anyone else have questions over their head?
Oh, Worlds, Inc., you're trying to sue one of the biggest game companies out there?
In the words of LtMkilla, "Let's see how that works out..."
So, who is going to sue next because a game has clouds?
lol