MMOs Face Patent Lawsuit
MMO developers and publishers are coming under fire from New York based Paltalk Holdings who have filed a lawsuit for patent infringement.
According to an article on Boston.com, Paltalk Holdings is to challenge MMO developers including Turbine, SOE, NCSoft, Activision Blizzard and UK-based Jagex over patent infringment. Paltalk Holdings, which is a provider of software and technology for real-time, rich media, interactive social networking, is trying to protect two patents covering "methods for deploying interactive applications over hosted networks and group messaging servers." In other words, two computers connected to an online world that see and share content fall into this category, according to Paltalk.
The complaint has been filed at the District Court in Marshall Texas, the same location where Microsoft settled a case with Paltalk in 2006 over the same patents. Paltalk had alleged that Microsoft had been infringing its patents with Halo 2 and Halo 3 on Xbox Live. On the fourth day of the trial, Microsoft conceded and settled out of court. Microsoft subsequently licensed the patents for an undisclosed sum.
Being that Microsoft settled out of court, Paltalk may have a chance of success. The MMO developers/publishers under fire may have to take a similar route to Microsoft and pay a licensing fee to get the case settled.
Related Info
| Developer: | Turbine |
| Publisher: | Codemasters |
| Release: | 24 Apr 2007 |
| Developer: | Turbine |
| Publisher: | Codemasters |
| Release: | 18 Nov 2008 |
User comments
Even if one were to go with the whole not aware of their existence thing, which is hard to believe considering they're supposed to be part of the IT world.
Then you'd still run into the same issues with Ultima Online, EQ, Star Wars Galaxies etc. With especially SWG being notable as that was a joint venture with a movie/multimedia company, namely Lucas Arts.
This particular patent must have been very innovatively written (you couldn't SERIOUSLY suggest they came up with the idea of sharing content online!) to make MS back down.
Software patents are absurd and those registering them deserves the ninth circle of hell.
This whole thing is ridiculous and should have been thrown out of court. Also, Microsoft should have fought this until Paltalk went bankrupt from pursuing the issue, not set a precedent because they did not want to be bothered with it.