Game Stooge

NCSoft Sued for Patent Infringement

• Scribbled on January 1st, 2009 by Jonathon Howard
• Filed in Legal Brief, MMO, PC

NCSoft got the worst Christmas gift of all this year when Worlds.com filed a patent infringement suit against the company on Christmas Eve! The suit claims that many of NCSoft’s popular MMORPGs (City of Heroes, City of Villains, Lineage I and II, Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, and Dungeon Runners) infringe on Worlds.com “System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space” patent. What is that, you say? According to Worlds lawyers it is:

The present invention provides a highly scalable architecture for a three-dimensional graphical, multi-user, interactive virtual world system. In a preferred embodiment a plurality of users interact in the three-dimensional, computer-generated graphical space where each user executes a client process to view a virtual world from the perspective of that user. The virtual world shows avatars representing the other users who are neighbors of the user viewing the virtual word. In order that the view can be updated to reflect the motion of the remote user’s avatars, motion, information is transmitted to a central server process which provides positions updates to client processes for neighbors of the user at that client process. The client process also uses an environment database to determine which background objects to render as well as to limit the movement of the user’s avatar.

This is significant not just for NCSoft but for all MMOs, as the patent seems to describes just about every 3 dimensional avatar based game out there! The lawyers for Worlds.com won’t say that there are others they’re looking to sue, but they invariably are! Stephen F. Roth, Worlds.com’s lead attorney has said, “I’m not at liberty to disclose what other companies I believe come within the scope of the claims… I think it is a very broad and robust claim, managing both bandwidth and the display and interaction of avatars in virtual worlds and massively multiplayer games.”

What he thinks matters very little though, what matters is how the Court decides initially in the suit. Worlds.com is hoping that the court will find the patent valid and enforceable. If the Court does then the company will begin looking into damages and monetary compensation.

This is just beginning and as the suit move forward we will keep you up to date on how the suit progresses!

(Thanks, 1Up.com.)