Worlds.com: We'll Sue World Of Warcraft and Second Life News Item

Worlds.com: We'll Sue World Of Warcraft and Second Life

11 Mar 2009 at 19:34:45 by Bill Vaughan

The CEO of Worlds.com, Tom Kidrin, has stated that if his court case against NCSoft, the maker of MMOs such as Guild Wars and Tabula Rasa, is successful he will follow it up by suing other MMO developers like World of Warcraft's creators, Blizzard Entertainment.

Kidrin claims that his company, Worlds.com, owns the patent to create virtual worlds, dating back to the 90s. He claims his company came by the patents via Starbright World, part of the Starlight Starbright Foundation. Starbright World is an online world developed for seriously ill children, and is seen as a "private wonderland" for them. The patents somehow ended up with the management of Worlds.com, who were then advised by lawyers from the General Patent Corporation to sue companies for using the architecture for a online world, set out in these patents.

The case against NCSoft is being held in East Texas which, according to Business Insider, is a jurisdiction that is known to have ruled in favour of the plaintiff against foreigners in patent cases once or twice before.

User comments

(1) Posted: 00:39 on 12 Mar 2009

Elly Davis

Strewth, huge ramifications if it is successful. Not sure how likely that is, I'd have to follow some of those links to research and I just can't be arsed:)

(2) Posted: 23:39 on 12 Mar 2009

thief

I'll be VERY surprised if they are successful, hopefully they're not. It'll just encourage more stupid patent claims.

(3) Posted: 23:20 on 20 Mar 2009

Farseer Lolotea

I have no comment on the legitimacy of his claim.

However, the lawsuit itself seems like a killjoy thing to do: If he won, it's not unlikely that he'd completely destroy MMOs...and make a lot of people unhappy in the process.