Worlds.com Files Potentially Massive MMO Patent Suit Against NCsoft

[Kimiko]

Virtual Worlds News reports Worlds.com filed a potentially significant patent infringement suit against NCsoft on Christmas Eve. In the Complaint Worlds.com claims NCsoft games such as City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dungeon Runners, Exteel, Guild Wars, Lineage, Lineage II, and Tabula Rasa infringe on their "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space" patent. From the language of the patent's abstract, should it be upheld there could be broad reaching implications for the massively multiplayer gaming industry. It reads:

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.

It will be for the lawyers to determine, but 3D virtual world games with avatars sounds like just about every popular MMO out there. This action appears intended to force that issue. The very first item sought as judgment by Worlds is an order finding the patent to be valid and enforceable.

If the court finds in Worlds.com's favor, then along with likely monetary damages and unknown changes to NCsoft's titles, other publishers could find themselves on the receiving end of similar suits. In an update, Virtual World News spoke with World.com's lead attorney Stephen F. Roth who said, "I'm not at liberty to disclose what other companies I believe come within the scope of the claims," and added, "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."

The holiday timing of the filing means it may be a while before we know the next developments in the case. NCsoft probably won't be officially served with the complaint until after the New Year, and then they have 20 days to respond. Until then there's no need to panic, but for MMO fans this is definitely something to keep an eye on.

[yayaok]

what the fuck...? this is so stupid lol

[The Blackrose]

They're targetting low first so they can hit high later. If they went after SOE, EA or Blizzard first they would have hell to pay.

[Elesirdur]

Why not sue Blizzard? Hmm, maybe because they've got assloads of money and can hire the best legal representation they can find to defend and counter-sue these idiots? Sounds about right.

I'm guessing they went after NCSoft because they are a Korean company and someone's found some kind of loophole or advantage in in Korean law.

Or, most likely, this is just a publicity stunt. Worlds.com runs some shitty Second Life-esque like service, although they claim it to be running since 1994 which predates SL by many years, and are probably just trolling for new accounts.

[Priran]

it's called patent trolling. they patented something so broad and general that it can't be invented around, and it's cheaper to just settle out of court than fight it.

[Cephius]

lolz, PA pretty much sums this up