MMOs Face Patent Lawsuit

17 Sep 2009 at 01:39:57 by Paul Younger

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.

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