Fed Circuit hands victory to ‘World of Warcraft’ game maker
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision which found a patent that covers technology for customising online game characters was obvious.
In a precedential decision handed down on Friday, June 21, the Federal Circuit handed victory to Activision Blizzard, the creator of online games including “Diablo” and “World of Warcraft”.
At the centre of the dispute was US patent number 8,253,743, a patent owned by Game and Technology Co (GAT).
Activision had sought an inter partes review (IPR) of the patent, called “Method and system for providing character having game item functions”, which relates to the customisation of game characters in online games by combining game items with layers of an avatar.
Specifically, the ‘743 patent discloses a method and system for providing “game item[s]” to internet game characters and generating a type of avatar the patent refers to as a “gamvatar” that is equipped with particular game items.
In a final written decision, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) determined that the challenged claims were “obvious based on the combined teachings” of the prior art references.
Last week, the Federal Circuit agreed with this conclusion, finding that patent was obvious in light of a user manual for “Diablo II”. The manual describes a player customising a character by equipping it with game items such as armor and weapons.
The Federal Circuit also rejected GAT’s contention that the PTAB erred in its construction of two terms “gamvatar” and “layers”.
According to the court, the ‘743 patent describes ‘gamvatar’ as both “an avatar for exclusive use in a game” and “an avatar that is capable of performing game item functions”.
However, the PTAB determined that the ‘gamvatar’ of the ’743 patent is a “combination of ‘the conventional avatar with the game item function,’ rather than a combination of a ‘conventional gamvatar’ with a game item function”, as suggested by GAT.
GAT asserted that the PTAB was wrong to construe ‘gamvatar’ to mean avatar.
“GAT asserts that under the broadest reasonable interpretation, the ‘gamvatar’ ‘is concurrently usable online and in-game’ and that the ‘claims do not need to recite the additional language of ‘representing a user on a website’ because that ‘requirement is inherent in the plain and ordinary meaning of gamvatar as evidenced by . . . the claims and specification’,” said Circuit Judge Wallach, on behalf of the court.
Wallach added that claim one doesn’t require the ‘gamvatar’ to represent a user both in a game and on a website, but instead recites a ‘gamvatar’ configured to have certain features. The rest of the claims provide various descriptions of how the ‘gamvatar’ is configured.
“The challenged claims, therefore, explain that the ‘gamvatar’ is an avatar combined with game item functions having characteristics as provided by the claims and thus supports the PTAB’s construction,” said the Federal Circuit.
The court affirmed the PTAB’s final decision.
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