Activision Blizzard & Zynga Sued For Patent Infringement

06 Jan 2011 at 20:09:32 by Peter Parrish

Walker Digital, fresh from attempting to sue Facebook over patent infringement (a lawsuit described as "completely frivolous" by its target,) is now launching a similarly ambitious lawsuit against videogaming giants Activision Blizzard and Zynga.

The full text of the suit can be read here and alleges that a huge number of Actvision Blizzard and Zynga releases (including World of Warcraft, various Call of Duties, DJ Hero 2, Mafia Wars and Blur) infringe upon a Walker Digital patent concerning a "database driven online distribution tournament system."

Said patent is, more specifically, defined as "A method and a system for a distributed electronic tournament system in which many remotely located players participate in a tournament through input/output devices connected to a central controller which manages the tournament." It was filed in early 2001 and granted in July of 2002.

Those with a firm grasp of videogaming history may, at this point, be mentally noting examples of this kind of thing that existed well before 2001.

Walker Digital is demanding a level of compensation from Activision Blizzard and Zynga that, according to Gamasutra "cannot presently be quantified but will be ascertained through discovery or at trial." Little in life is certain, but it seems likely that Activision and Zynga's massive corporate wallets are fairly safe in this case.

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