FarmVille creator Zynga sued by Walker Digital over gaming patent
Well, what do you know, it's almost noon. Time for another Zynga lawsuit, isn't it? Walker Digital has sued Zynga and Activision Blizzard for patent infringement, claiming the three companies made use of U.S. patent no. 6, 425,828, which belongs to Walker Digital, according to TechCrunch. Issued on July 30, 2002, the patent is titled, "Database driven online distributed tournament system." More specifically, Walker Digital's 20-page patent boils down to:
A method and a system for a distributed electronic tournament system in which many remotely located players participate in a tournament through input/output devices connected to a central controller which manages the tournament. The method includes the steps of (a) uniquely identifying a player communicating with the central controller via an associated input/output device...
While there are three more steps to how the patent operates involving prize winnings and database management, what's most interesting is the first. Because of how widely terms like that could interpreted, games like Mafia Wars, World of Warcraft and the Call of Duty series are claimed by Walker Digital to infringe on the patent, Tech Crunch reports.
With the amount of times the company has faced legal disputes in 2010, it is almost unsurprising that the social gaming juggernaut didn't even make it through the first month of 2011 without a lawsuit being presented to them. Oh, the joys of running multi-billion dollar companies. We've contacted Zynga for comment, so stay tuned.
[Source: Priorsmart]
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