That’s right gaming fans, we’ve got yet another patent infringement lawsuit on our hands. Worlds.com, a company that focuses on creating ’3D communities’ has filed a lawsuit against NCsoft, the company behind Tabula Rasa, Guild Wars, Lineage and City of Heroes. They’re claiming that the company violated a patent awarded to Worlds.com in February of 2007. If they win the case it’s going to be a big deal; the patent applies to what can only be described as the most basic underlying concept of every MMOs.
The patent is for technology that allows users to “interact with other users in a virtual space” through a server, with an avatar representing each user. As you can imagine, that concept applies to pretty much every MMO in existence. Worlds.com is seeking ‘damages’ and a ‘permanent injunction’ against violations of the patent, although any company they won a lawsuit against would likely find that Worlds.com is willing to negotiate, especially if they managed to win against powerhouses like Blizzard. NCsoft is likely their first target as they are not a US based company and likely have less lawyers on their payroll familiar with patent law and less money than Blizzard and Sony.
Jack Thompson – our favorite disbarred lawyer – will never rest, it seems. The attorney, who was recently permanently disbarred, last year bought stock in Take Two to lead a stockholder revolt against chairman Strauss Zelnick, who he compared to a young Hitler. However, that’s not all: Thompson’s email exchange with GamePolitics has been disclosed, where he claims that God – yes, God Himself – was responsible for Take-Two’s stock dropping in value by 35% in the past year.
And he also condemns Zelnick to an “eternity of punishment… unless he repents and accepts Christ.” The first email is below; hit the jump for the full exchange.
From: Jack Thompson
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 6:44 AM
To: Dennis McCauley
Subject: Spin this, Strauss…
GOD STRIKES TAKE-TWO DOWN
Take-Two dropped $2.35 to $9.72 in extended trading after the announcement and fell as low as $9.60. The shares… have declined 35 percent this year. The results contrast with comments Zelnick made in an interview on Nov. 3, when he said sales of the company’s video games hadn’t been hurt by the recession…
READ ON »
Remember WarDevil? No? I don’t blame you, as the game was introduced far before PS3 and Xbox 360 hit the market, and was due out at least three years ago. Bits and pieces of the game have been revealed to gamers so far, but 2009 may finally be the year the title fights its way to our hands.
GameCyte reports that UTV – the company that owns Digi-Guys (the developer) – said in an interview that the action game may very well be released this year. The site follows it up with word from Digi-Guys themselves, stating that they will release new material this year, though a specific release date was eluded.
However, the studio has launched a mini-site for the game, offering new teaser content. You will have to make do with that until more information on the game shows up.
