Activision Blizzard fights off game patent suit
A US district court has sided with Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard in a patent infringement case brought before the judge by patent house Worlds.
Worlds filed the complaint in 2012 alleging Activision had infringed 21 claims in five of its patents related to online games and virtual spaces. Activision hit back, alleging that claims of the patents-in-suit were invalid and requested a summary judgment.
The US District Court for the District of Massachusetts sided with Activision on Friday, allowing the suit to be dismissed after a judge found claims in Worlds’ patents invalid.
The claims were found to have been directed towards an abstract idea and lacked an inventive concept, making them invalid in reference to the court’s Mayo/Alice analysis.
“Worlds’ asserted claims use a general-purpose computer to employ well-known filtering or crowd control methods and means that ultimately use same to display graphical results and generate a view of the virtual world, none of which is inherently inventive or sufficient to ‘transform’ the claimed abstract idea into a patent-eligible application, said Judge Denise Casper.
“For all these reasons, the remaining claims do not involve the inventive concept necessary to convert the abstract idea into a patent eligible process and they are, therefore, invalid.”
The patents in suit were US numbers 7,181,690, 7,493,558, 7,945,856, 8,082,501 and 8,145,998.
Worlds has a portfolio of ten US patents for “multi-server 3D applications” and has targeted other online games giants such as Microsoft, alleging infringement on its patents by Minecraft, and publisher Bungie for its game Destiny.
Background
Worlds’ original complaint against Activision Blizzard allegro infringement of four of its patents, specifically in relation to the publisher’s immensely popular World of Warcraft and Call of Duty titles.
While the litigation was proceeding, a third party, Bungie, filed a series of inter partes review (IPR) petitions challenging the asserted claims of the five patents-in-suit. This led both Activision and Worlds to stay proceedings in 2015 until the IPR was resolved.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) determined that 34 of the 40 claims were unpatentable.
Worlds appealed the decision to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and was awarded a full reversal of invalidation from the court in 2018, vacating three of the PTAB’s invalidity rulings and remanded them back to the PTAB for re-evaluation.
The district court held a status conference in April 2020 to set a further schedule for Activision proceedings.
Activision then filed a motion for summary judgment that the remaining patent claims were invalid in May 2020.
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