http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/04/13/worlds-inc-explains-why-its-suing-activision-blizzard-over-world-of-warcraft-and-call-of-duty/

In a nut shell Worlds Inc. say they invented a system that describes a way of limiting the number of Avatars on screen in a 3D generated world.?!

This in on par wth Apples rounded corner patent.

Patent suits like this are nothing more than a money grab.  Companies do this all the time in America:  patent something (or buy a patent), go without using the technology for years, then sue someone who may have created something similar.

I'm just debating on when to sue Valve for violating my "Edgeless Safety Cube" patent.  I think Portal 2 will make a comeback on sales, then I'll hit them.

Originally posted by expresso

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/04/13/worlds-inc-explains-why-its-suing-activision-blizzard-over-world-of-warcraft-and-call-of-duty/

In a nut shell Worlds Inc. say they invented a system that describes a way of limiting the number of Avatars on screen in a 3D generated world.?!

This in on par wth Apples rounded corner patent.

So ? They have patent but they didn't invent it. It's nothing new from what they described. Remember that idiots from USA allow you to patent even most stupid things under the sun. Like Microsoft have patent for double mouse click. And for making long names 8-characters short. And stupid stuff like that.

Some idiot even have patent about using stick in television that is not made from wood.

Whole patent system in USA is just sad and pathethic. 

Hmm... so they're saying "every engine belongs to them". Interesting. No wonder Vivendi has wanted to sell Activision/Blizzard the last couple months. No wonder no one wanted to buy it.

I'm no expert in patent litigation, but I'm willing to bet this will turn out alot like car manufacturers or many other appliances.

Does make me laugh that Activision/Blizzard is the first people they sue and they haven't completed the investigations into other firms or are unwilling to say who else they are going to sue when looking at the scope of the patent it is clear that Activision/Blizzard would not have been the first to infringe it. Sorta smacks of aiming for the biggest target in the hope of scaring what they consider to be the smaller companies into paying out without having to go through the court process.

I guess a lot of this will come down to how specific the patent is in it's technical design as i am pretty sure that most companies would not be using the exact same architecture and also if the patent is so wide that it could have been logically seen that other people would have come up with their own way of doing the same thing it could end up just being thrown out and the patent scrapped anyway.

Originally posted by Shadoed

Does make me laugh that Activision/Blizzard is the first people they sue and they haven't completed the investigations into other firms or are unwilling to say who else they are going to sue when looking at the scope of the patent it is clear that Activision/Blizzard would not have been the first to infringe it. Sorta smacks of aiming for the biggest target in the hope of scaring what they consider to be the smaller companies into paying out without having to go through the court process.

I guess a lot of this will come down to how specific the patent is in it's technical design as i am pretty sure that most companies would not be using the exact same architecture and also if the patent is so wide that it could have been logically seen that other people would have come up with their own way of doing the same thing it could end up just being thrown out and the patent scrapped anyway.

This isn't the first company they've targeted, they went after NCsoft back in 2008. NCsoft eventually settled out of court in 2010.

Originally posted by expresso

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/04/13/worlds-inc-explains-why-its-suing-activision-blizzard-over-world-of-warcraft-and-call-of-duty/

In a nut shell Worlds Inc. say they invented a system that describes a way of limiting the number of Avatars on screen in a 3D generated world.?!

This in on par wth Apples rounded corner patent.

2 years ago, they sued ncsoft for the same reasons 

Apr 27th 2010 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/04/27/worlds-com-vs-ncsoft-lawsuit-settled/

It's been a little over a year since Worlds.com went after NCsoft in a lawsuit citing patent infringement. Worlds.com alleged thatNCsoft violated patents for scalable chat as well as a system of interacting in a virtual space, and the battle was on. Now, 16 months after it began, the matter is settled -- literally.

Virtual Worlds News reported this morning that the lawsuit hasbeen dismissed due to a settlement between the two parties. The terms of the settlement are confidential as are the reasons behind it, but it may well be that Worlds.com president and sole full-time employee Thomas Kidrin has simply exhausted his resources. Kidrin was recently quoted as saying "if we do not develop any new projects, we would have to severely diminish our operations or halt them entirely," so going toe-to-toe withNCsoft was a pretty ambitious project.

Originally posted by Stizzled
This is old news, Worlds Inc. has been doing this (successfully) for years. ActiBlizz will settle out of court, it's cheaper and less time consuming.

You have no way to know how "successful" that settlement was.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/04/27/worlds-com-vs-ncsoft-lawsuit-settled/

Originally posted by Shadoed

Does make me laugh that Activision/Blizzard is the first people they sue and they haven't completed the investigations into other firms or are unwilling to say who else they are going to sue when looking at the scope of the patent it is clear that Activision/Blizzard would not have been the first to infringe it. Sorta smacks of aiming for the biggest target in the hope of scaring what they consider to be the smaller companies into paying out without having to go through the court process.

I guess a lot of this will come down to how specific the patent is in it's technical design as i am pretty sure that most companies would not be using the exact same architecture and also if the patent is so wide that it could have been logically seen that other people would have come up with their own way of doing the same thing it could end up just being thrown out and the patent scrapped anyway.

It's probably somthing basic jotted down on the back of a napkin uaing ketchup.

If Player B is not within visual range of Player A (as ruled by the graphics engine) then dont send data packets releated to Player B to Player A.... followed by a tea stain.

Originally posted by Kaelano1

Originally posted by Stizzled
This is old news, Worlds Inc. has been doing this (successfully) for years. ActiBlizz will settle out of court, it's cheaper and less time consuming.

You have no way to know how "successful" that settlement was.

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/04/27/worlds-com-vs-ncsoft-lawsuit-settled/

 

 

The company is still alive and kicking, still holds the same patents, and is up to their old tricks again. Sounds to me like they have been fairly successful so far.

Originally posted by Stizzled

Originally posted by Kaelano1

Originally posted by Stizzled
This is old news, Worlds Inc. has been doing this (successfully) for years. ActiBlizz will settle out of court, it's cheaper and less time consuming.

You have no way to know how "successful" that settlement was.

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/04/27/worlds-com-vs-ncsoft-lawsuit-settled/

 

 

The company is still alive and kicking, still holds the same patents, and is up to their old tricks again. Sounds to me like they have been fairly successful so far.

Nah they spent all their ANET money and are looking for easy cash again rather then doing some work.

Originally posted by Stizzled

Originally posted by Kaelano1

Originally posted by Stizzled
This is old news, Worlds Inc. has been doing this (successfully) for years. ActiBlizz will settle out of court, it's cheaper and less time consuming.

You have no way to know how "successful" that settlement was.

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/04/27/worlds-com-vs-ncsoft-lawsuit-settled/

 

 

The company is still alive and kicking, still holds the same patents, and is up to their old tricks again. Sounds to me like they have been fairly successful so far.

 Wonder when they will sue Arenanet / GW2 as it uses basically the same tech. Looks like it will be open season on all MMO's

Originally posted by expresso

Originally posted by Shadoed

Does make me laugh that Activision/Blizzard is the first people they sue and they haven't completed the investigations into other firms or are unwilling to say who else they are going to sue when looking at the scope of the patent it is clear that Activision/Blizzard would not have been the first to infringe it. Sorta smacks of aiming for the biggest target in the hope of scaring what they consider to be the smaller companies into paying out without having to go through the court process.

I guess a lot of this will come down to how specific the patent is in it's technical design as i am pretty sure that most companies would not be using the exact same architecture and also if the patent is so wide that it could have been logically seen that other people would have come up with their own way of doing the same thing it could end up just being thrown out and the patent scrapped anyway.

It's probably somthing basic jotted down on the back of a napkin uaing ketchup.

If Player B is not within visual range of Player A (as ruled by the graphics engine) then dont send data packets releated to Player B to Player A.... followed by a tea stain.

Their case is actually pretty air tight, they were smart about it and knew exactly what they were doing.

http://www.worlds.com/patentinformation.html

They are free to sue anyone anywhere that runs an online game.

I sure hope Blizz actually fight it and tell those tossers to go eff themselves.

Yeh, apparently some tool has patented 'cold fusion'. How the eff do you patent a technology which hasn't *actually* been invented or demonstratably working yet? Hey, I'll patent 'breathing' with three deep breathes in and two sharp breathes out, pretty sure that'd be water-tight enough to sue most of the population of the planet for infringement at some time or other. Frikken lunacy.

Originally posted by Stizzled

This isn't the first company they've targeted, they went after NCsoft back in 2008. NCsoft eventually settled out of court in 2010.

Cheers for the reminder. I do remember reading something about that a while ago (sure it was raised on these forums as well) but didn't realise it was the same company. Again though, the patents must be very specific because the concept of the online MMO and handling multiple players within a single environment has been around for about 34 years now and the handling of multiple users on a network accessing the same data for a damned site longer than that, well pre-dating their patents with fully graphical MMO's being around since the start of the 90's (stand to be corrected there).

Must say that a there is a lot of issues around these patent rows now and it is putting the brakes on creativity so much and what is even more worrying is that the international community doesn't seem to agree on the standards or decisions of a lot of these patent rows. Apple will win in one country, samsung in another, another country will just thrown it out and cancel the patent as being anti competition and so on......not good.