EA, Ubisoft, Disney Targets Of Patent Lawsuit

Texas-based Bareis Technologies is suing three game-industry titans over alleged patent violations. According to the suit, the three companies are infringing upon its “Optical disk having speech recognition templates for information access” patent, which is described thusly:

“A storage medium comprises a storage area which stores digital picture and/or audio information includes a plurality of image and/or sound information and a digital contents information table including a plurality of digital contents information which are related to the contents of said plurality of image and/or sound information. The digital contents information table of the storage area being divided into a plurality of sections providing speech recognition templates and other information by which the disk may be accessed, contents of the disk may be accessed, and information capable of outputting or displaying selected information, the selected disk, or contents thereof.”

In other words, it’s a patent on using voice commands to access material on optical discs such as CD-ROMS, CDs and DVDs.

Popular franchises such as Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, SOCOM and NASCAR are called out in the suit, which was filed Nov. 10 in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas. We’ll have to wait until the jury trial to see the plaintiff has a legitimate case, provided it even gets that far.