Activision Blizzard and Zynga sued over alleged patent infringement

@un4gvn94538

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll

@aray48
Yes, you can sue for anything, literally.

Doesn't mean a lawyer will take your case, a court will hear your case if you do get a lawyer, or that the court will find the case in your favour if you do get a lawyer and the court hears it. (Nor that you won't get jail time/large fine for frivolous lawsuits.)

@aray48
Ever since a patent was issued for an improved crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich and 'a method of swinging on a swing', no patent law suits surprise me.

@wormania

Yup. As Jack Thompson proved, jailtime CAN (and does) be given out for stupid lawsuits.

@aray48

I really hate America when I read articles like this.

@aray48

Amazon.com has patented the method for "one click online purchases", and I want to say somewhere they sued someone for doing the same thing.

@aray48

Apparently, he's built up a huge portfolio of patents since the late 90s, but (as far as anyone knows) hasn't done anything with them. Now, in the last couple of years, he's starting to drop lawsuits left and right. He's also sued Facebook, Microsoft and Capitol One.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-priceline-founder-jay-walker-now-files-patent-suits-for-a-living/

He does have one awesome library though:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker?currentPage=all

@Talos Izanagi

Neither.

@Talos Izanagi Who cares? We get massive lulz either way.

@Gibbeynator

Best to just give up altogether :P

@mbarriault

okay you can have the while loop, and ill take the if statement (and all its additions, including and not limited to if, else, else if, nested if)

aswell as the for loop.

@Tezz Jokes on you, for is just a specific case of while :)

@Tezz

You can have while, he can if statements

I'll take do while, switches and for loops.

That leaves for each up for grabs.

Soon all OOP will be open for lawsuits mwahahahaha

@eudaimo I'd rather not have information reek of defecation, thank you.

@eudaimo You know what else is like an asshole? You.

@Hank Hill That wasn't very nice, Hank.

@eudaimo
I hope your monocle smashed when it popped out whilst you were sitting in your ivory tower.

@eudaimo Response I've received have convinced me that my original post was a bit too condemnatory without being explanatory.

This post has a timestamp of 5:30 PM. Within *three minutes*, people started posting outrage about how greedy the plaintiff is, how frivolous the claims are and how society in general is going down the tubes.

None of that can really be assessed without a thorough review of the claims, knowledge of the facts that *none* of us have and at least a passing knowledge of the area of law in question.

I am *not* a patent attorney. I know very little about patent law. I do know enough to know that I don't know enough.

So that's what I was trying to express, and I'm truly sorry if my sarcasm came off as ruder than it should. For responses that express similar points (but more elegantly), see the multiple comments of BigE4284 and wealthofinsight, below.

We live in a society where someone will patent something, lay quiet about it, and after several companies start using said obscure patented item, sue them.

Or, file a very broad-based patent, like the design of a writing instrument, then try to sue every single pen and pencil manufacturer in the world.

One company even made it it's sole purpose in life, file as many patents it can, get the ones that stick, then sue the shit out of anyone who even comes near what it's patents describes. That's the entire business of their business.

So when something like this comes up, sounds like your typical bullshit patent trolling, we jump on it because it's probably going to be just like all the others. Some little asswipe thinks he can get a ton of money off a big company, will go to court, have his ass handed to him, then get raped over in the countersuit by those companies.

@eudaimo said:

>> *none* of us have and at least a passing knowledge
>> of the area of law in question.

None of us have any familiarity with patent law? I guess I should turn in my law degree and registration number from the Patent Office then.

Speak for yourself, man (and probably most people here). But don't assume everyone on the board is a non-attorney. We play video games too.

-p-

@pmiddy Hi Diddy,
You've actually misquoted me a bit.

I said we need knowledge of facts that none of us have AND a passing knowledge of patent law. I did not say "none of us have a passing knowledge of patent law." There are at least a number of patent attorneys in this thread, actually, and a few people who have studied it.

Hope that clarification is helpful.

@eudaimo Wow, after re-reading it, you're right, I TOTALLY misquoted you. My apologies. Mea culpa.

@pitseleh0 That's irrelevant unless the defendants were somehow prejudiced by the delay.

@BigE4284 In establishment of the case it could. But more so, in establishing the damages it is vital. For instance, if payment for damages is to be based on user base and/or games sold, filing a claim the first year WOW came out vs today is a big difference. Knowing of the violation and not filing suit sooner would look bad on Walker Digital and highlight it as a money grabbing scheme. After all, there is no way they could not have known about WOW and COD before now.
Also, depending on the history of the patent (I have not looked at it) one of the flaws in our patent system today (which they are trying to correct) is that you can link patents based on virtually nothing. You can file a patent today, to get today's date and then keep filing extensions and changes until you get what you want. Add to it the purchasing of patents and it gets more convoluted too. So you can finalize a patent today that has a date that is many years in the past. You now have prior documentation against your competitors. It's more complex than what I'm saying but that is what people do these days. It's underhanded. I'm not saying that Walker is doing this since I didn't read the patent but I am illustrating that time can be of a big indicator of an erroneous lawsuit.

@pitseleh0 There is no duty to file a patent infringement suit. Patents expire 20 years from filing, and the patent holder can sue at any time until the patent expires. BigE4284 mentioned prejudice and delay; neither has any bearing.

@pitseleh0 One more correction then I will shut up: Your description of continuation and divisional applications lacks an important detail. The claims in the later application must be supported by the earlier filing.

For example, suppose I file an application in 2000 describing my newly invented game. In 2002 a competitor comes out with a game that I want my patent to cover. Sounds wrong? Sounds underhanded? I can file a continuation and write new claims, and--I can even have my competitor's 2002 game in front of me while I do it--but the new claims must be supported by what I filed in 2000. That means that I must have described the competitor's 2002 game in my 2000 filing with sufficient detail to enable a person of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the game without undue experimentation. If I have done that, I deserve to write claims to protect my invention.

I am a patent attorney IRL.

@wealthofinsight Oh ok, thanks for chiming in to clarify. That makes a lot more sense then.

@wealthofinsight

Additionally, I believe the patent infringement case is most likely targeted against Blizzard's WoW arena tournament that they started a year or two ago... most likely not against the entire game itself.

So it's not that long after when the probable infringement occurred.

Also players had to pay to enter the PVP Arena tournament. $20 USD, you got 3 characters. And, winners and high-ranking players won in-game prizes.

So "...the dependent claims in Walker Digital's patent make it pretty clear that it was intended to describe tournaments with entry fees and prizes, which certainly isn't the case with the games cited." is incorrect when regarding World of Warcraft. Blizzard themselves sanctioned the tournament.

@wealthofinsight hello fellow patent attorney. I hate to correct the corrector, but delay in filing a patent suit absolutely matters if the plaintiff knew or should have known of the infringing activity and sat on their hands. Laches is presumed 6 years after the plaintiff knew or should have known of the infringing activity, especially if the extended waiting caused a prejudice to the defense's case, e.g., they destroyed potentially exculpating evidence as part of their ordinary course of business between the beginning of the delay and the filing of the suit. Granted the application of laches is a rebuttable presumption, but to say prejudice and delay have no bearing is not entirely accurate.

-p-

@pmiddy Hi there patent attorney! Good point about laches--delay is not entirely irrelevant. But isn't laches an affirmative defense, requiring the asserter (here Activision and Zynga) to admit to infringement? Also, the asserter has the burden of proof (preponderance?)--not a presumption, right? So yes, it is not entirely relevant, but relying on laches alone is not advisable.

See kids! Lawyers are cool too!

@wealthofinsight An affirmative defense of laches does NOT require an admission of infringement. It's an equitable defense that takes issue with the filing of the suit itself, regardless of merits.

And I would never rely solely on laches as a defense. I was just pointing out it wasn't irrelvant.

@BigE4284 Thank you for your informed post, BigE4284.

@BigE4284 Counter Strike was released for retail on November 8, 2000. The Mod was actually out before the patent was filed but the retail version for PC was in developement when the patent was filed. I don't know much about patent law. Does there need to be an existing product currently on the market to render a patent improperly issued or does the knowledge of a product that is currently under developement count aswell?

I would say that's easy to prove. MUD's were doing character data storage since the 80's. Now if you can apply "tournament" to a MUD, that's another story, but I don't think that would be too hard.

@Regularpants It doesn't have to be an existing product on the market but the information needed to be publicly available more than one year before the patent application was filed.so if it was secretly in development at the time then no, that would not suffice.