World.com files suit against NCSoft

Niska

Spotted this during the post Christmas news catch-up.

http://www.massively.com/2008/12/12/patents-threaten-virtual-worlds-mmogs/

http://www.massively.com/2008/12/29/worlds-com-files-suit-against-ncsoft-for-patent-infringement/

http://www.massively.com/2008/12/30/the-patent-that-stole-christmas/


Basically worlds.com are claiming that NCSoft are infringing on a couple of their patents about "virtual worlds". If successful (and thus setting precedence) they'll probably then go after all MMO's. That's why they're targeting NCSoft - they probably see them as the weakest of the MMO fraternity and the easiest to win against. Also the timing (24th of December), when even lawyers celebrate Christmas, suggest a carefully planned "offensive".

From NCSoft:

"We can't comment on potential litigation except to say that NCsoft takes all legal action seriously -- even if the company believes a lawsuit has no merit," an NCsoft representative told Virtual Worlds News. "We intend to defend ourselves vigorously"

Ivan

Your first link seems to imply that they might actually have a case. Of the two patents in question, one is a "Scalable virtual world client-server chat system" which would cover the interactive chat systems of virtually every MMO.

In that event, this could be a crippling lawsuit against every MMO ever sold

Rev Hellfire

Some nice anysis on those sites, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.