Nintendo patents "Massively Single-Player" term originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Worlds.com vs. NCsoft lawsuit settled originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last week, on Thursday 8 April, Corey Fahy in Philadelphia filed a lawsuit against Linden Lab and more than 25 others, in the Pennsylvania East District Court (case number 2:2010cv01561, assigned to judge Joel Harvey Slomsky). Fahy alleges that an algorithm in one of his Second Life products has been subjected to copyright infringement, accompanied by the usual requests for damages, statutory damages, ten times damages, attorney's fees and all that.

Where do we even begin? We'll spare you most of the cruft and go straight to the heart of the problems that we can see with this particular lawsuit.

Continue reading Fahy vs Linden Lab: No case to answer?

Fahy vs Linden Lab: No case to answer? originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week The Virtual Whirl virtual mailbag is stuffed to overflowing with queries about the new Second Life Terms Of Service (TOS) that launched slightly behind the new Second Life 2.0 viewer. The new version has grown from 7,500 words to more than 30,000 words across no less than 18 separate documents, all of which you must agree to in order to use the service - and golly, it has raised some questions.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: The emperor's new terms

The Virtual Whirl: The emperor's new terms originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Article One Partners, "a global community that rewards members for discovering patent validity evidence to legitimize US patents", has announced that they have turned up prior-art that may (or may not) be useful in overturning the Worlds.com US Patent 7,181,690.

It's difficult to judge on its merits. Article One receives revenue by on-selling that information to interested parties. We're not sure how much for, but the prize paid for locating the information is US$50,000, so we're expecting that the cost of seeing the inforomation is considerably more than that.

Continue reading Article One asserts prior art on Worlds.com patent

Article One asserts prior art on Worlds.com patent originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Quite surprisingly, according to Patent Arcade, Taser International Inc have filed to voluntarily drop their lawsuit against Linden Lab (and numerous others). It isn't often that we get to cover the end of a lawsuit -- they generally tend to drag on somewhat -- but it's possible that this might not be quite over.

Linden Lab hadn't yet filed a response to the original complaint, the suit can be dropped 'without prejudice'. That means the suit can be filed again.

Perhaps Taser International has found some far more interesting or lucrative basis for a case. It is also possible that the changes to Second Life products that now assert the primacy of the TASER trademark have satisfied the company. Or perhaps, at the end of the day, the whole effort met some unknown marketing targets. This could all be on again. Watch this space.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Taser International vs Linden Lab: Lawsuit dropped! originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 06 May 2009 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Worlds.com vs. NCSoft moves from Texas to California originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Taser International Inc have filed a lawsuit against Linden Lab (and others, including some present and some departed) staff. We got a hold of the April 17 complaint yesterday, and have been going through it since then. We've got a summary of the complaint and issues for you, but we won't be linking to the complaint due to the presence of what may be considered to be pornographic images in Exhibit 2. The "crack den" reference in the headline is a recurring phrase in the legal complaint. You'll see why.

If you want the one-sentence summary, Taser seem to have failed to do their homework and basic research, but their case doesn't seem to be entirely without merit either.

Continue reading Taser International vs Linden Lab: Crack Den crackdown

Taser International vs Linden Lab: Crack Den crackdown originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As you are probably already well aware, virtual environment business Worlds.com is currently engaging in a legal action against MMOG developer/operator NCsoft for patent infringment, based on a patent that more or less covers almost every client-server based multiplayer game and virtual environment out there.

It doesn't end there, however. Worlds.com CEO Thom Kidrin has told Eric Krangel at Business Insider that if the suit against NCsoft succeeds, industry leaders World of Warcraft and Second Life are next. The company's legal representatives in this action, General Patent Corporation also yesterday announced that Worlds.com has been granted a third patent that extends the reach of their existing two.

Continue reading World of Warcraft and Second Life are next, says Worlds.com CEO

World of Warcraft and Second Life are next, says Worlds.com CEO originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Just to update you all on the progress of the Worlds.com vs NCsoft lawsuit (a patent suit that is pitched to spread to other MMOG and virtual environment developers/operators), the Korea Times reports on 31 December 2008, that NCsoft had yet to be served with notice of the suit.

There are essentially only two ways in which the notice can be legally served to NCsoft in the Republic of Korea to establish jurisdiction over NCsoft as a defendant. One is through formal diplomatic channels, and the other is via the Hague Service Convention. The HSC was established because of the enormous delays in using the formal diplomatic channels. There's a time-limit on the serving of notice, and formal diplomatic channels for civil suits often take quite a bit longer.

Continue reading Worlds.com vs NCsoft: Not yet served?

Worlds.com vs NCsoft: Not yet served? originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

NCsoft prepares the defense against Worlds.com originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As you probably know by now, Worlds.com has filed suit against NCsoft for infringement of one of two key patents that it holds. We talked about those patents and Worlds.com's securing the services of General Patent Corporation for the purposes of enforcement earlier this month.

We can learn a few things from the suit against NCsoft, including (we think) how Worlds.com/General Patent sees its own position with respect to these claims (they don't seem to think it's as firm as it could be). You might also be wondering about prior art (which is abundant). Well prior art, in and of itself, is simply not enough. Not on its own.

Continue reading The patent that stole Christmas

The patent that stole Christmas originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Worlds.com files suit against NCsoft for patent infringement originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Any person who "invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent," subject to the conditions and requirements of the law. So says the US Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO), citing the applicable statute.

There's a lot of slicing, dicing and hair splitting over nearly every part of that sentence, and some extraordinary debates and numerous calls for reform of the patent system. Nevertheless, today we're looking at two patents that the owners appear to be keen to enforce.

Between them, they appear to cover a few simple, and difficult-to-avoid systems that underpin pretty much every graphical virtual environment, and MMOG that you can think of, from World of Warcraft, to Second Life -- and perhaps most of the online multiplayer games since the era of Doom.

Continue reading Patents threaten virtual worlds, MMOGs

Patents threaten virtual worlds, MMOGs originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Well, sort of -- it is hard to be precise in the scant space that a headline provides. University of Southern Queensland (Australia) has a patent in the pipe at the moment that covers the extraction and avatar expression of avatar emotions -- at least if we're reading this right.

The idea is that the system is supposed to work out emotional content based on input text or voice, generate an overall emotion plot in a multidimensional coordinate system, and then express that emotion through your avatar. Essentially your avatar is animated and expressive according to your detected mood in order to communicate the non-verbal cues normally associated with that mood.

Will you see this in (say) Second Life, for example? Probably not. The Second Life Terms of Service grant an "a non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free and perpetual License, under any and all patent rights you may have" to Linden Lab and all Second Life users as a part of pushing content in or through the virtual world.

That scares the pants off of enough IP-lawyers right there, so it isn't very likely we'll see this show up in Linden Lab's virtual domain.

USQ patenting avatar emotional body-language originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.