New Race Coming For EQ2: Patent Troll?
From The Escapist:
Worlds.com CEO Thom Kidrin is getting ready to sue the pants off every MMOG in existence, including World of Warcraft and Second Life, for infringing on what he claims is his company's patented intellectual property: Scalable virtual worlds with thousands of users.
Worlds.com claims to hold a patent for the idea of virtual worlds that dates back to 1995 and that could quite literally apply to every 3-D online world currently in existence. In fact, Worlds.com has already taken one MMOG heavyweight to court: Korea-based NCsoft, the company behind games like Lineage and Guild Wars. And while legal expert Ben Buranske, contacted by Business Insider, says the wealth of "prior art" will make the case tough to prove, World.com's court of choice, the Eastern District of Texas, is notorious for handing heavy damage awards to plaintiffs in cases like this. Nintendo was recently ordered to pay $21 million in damages after a jury in the district found the company had violated 12 patents relating to its controllers held by a small Texas company called Anascape.
Honestly, all I can imagine is a troll in a 3-piece suit, with a cell phone to his ear, saying, "Murray, do you want to do lunch or BE lunch?" Or is this going to be a new addition to The League of Cruelty
Seriously, how is it that plaintiffs get to pick the exact court in which to sue? No, no, we're not going to fight you out in Antonica, you'll have to come fight us in our swamp!
Labels: mmo economics
posted by Toldain | 4:16 PM
6 Comments:
William Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984
TRON (godawful bad movie), 1982
These guys don't have a leg to stand on, when it comes to originating the idea of an "online" community. Next thing they'll be suing Al Gore for stealing the Internet idea from them.
Tron was a great movie! I'm not sure books or movies could be used as prior art. Worlds.com actually did have products that used their technology, unlike, say, the Discovery Channel, which is suing Amazon over the Kindle even though they never actually built an ebook.
Patent Troll! Why, that DOES sound like a member of the League of Cruelty!
More Prior Art.
The Electronic Bulletin Board Service - 1978
Multi-User Dungeons - Adventure, created in 1975
Despite people suggesting that these trolls don't have a chance.. I'm afraid they do. And it's probably a fairly high chance of success at that. They don't NEED to win a court case, they only need to get SOMEONE to settle. Once someone settles, then it's dominoes after that.
Take a look at techdirt...
The patent and copyright system is broken. Enjoy the blog link.
Look at all the "prior art" cases involving the Online Adult industry.
Specifically, Acacia, Acacia has pretty much failed at all attempts of suing the industry. Acacia does make it's business by buying up patent holders rights to the idea and then attempting to sue companies for what they think is infringement. Scumbags.
If some one does buckle and settle, yes then there is a potential for worlds.com to start going sue happy, but they need to know what they are up against. They are going to fail just like Acacia has many times in the past, trying to enforce patents YEARS after the products have been released to the market.
Yes, it's clear why they aren't going after Blizzard first, for example. Blizzard is a US company, and has plenty of money to defend this nonsense. I think some Blood Elves are the right guys to deal with this nonsense.
Oh, and I thought Tron was good, too.
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