Walker Digital, the “invention company” founded by Priceline.com co-inventor Jay S. Walker, isn’t just suing Facebook, he’s also trying to take on some giant game publishers.
More specifically, Walker Digital has just filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Zynga, Activision and the latter’s subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment.
As you can see in the complaint embedded below, the patent-in-suit is U.S. patent no. 6,425,828, which was issued on July 30, 2002. The patent is entitled ‘DATABASE DRIVEN ONLINE DISTRIBUTED TOURNAMENT SYSTEM’.
Walker Digital argues that this gaming patent concerns a product and method of distributed electronic tournaments for a plurality of players that exchanges information with a central controller to influence game play while a player plays in the tournament, and stores player information to influence game play in a subsequent tournament.
According to the “invention company”, a whole slew of games from the aforementioned publishers, including Zynga’s Mafia Wars, Wolfenstein, the Call of Duty series and World Of Warcraft, among others, infringe on the patent.
Hence the image on top (it’s a WoW troll).
We’ll keep an eye on the case.
Zynga was founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus and is named for his late American Bulldog, Zinga. Loyal and spirited, Zinga’s name is a nod to a legendary African warrior queen. The early supporting founding team included Eric Schiermeyer, Michael Luxton, Justin Waldron, Kyle Stewart, Scott Dale, John Doerr, Steve Schoettler, Kevin Hagan, and Andrew Trader. Zynga’s mission is connecting the world through games. Everyday millions of people interact with their friends and express their unique personalities through our...
Activision (NASDAQ: ATVI) is an American video game developer and publisher. It was the first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles.
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