Lawsuit claims patent infringement by Turbine
Ever heard of Treehouse Avatar Technologies? Yeah, neither have we, but a lawsuit filed this week is aiming to get the Canadian-based web services company a little publicity.
After being awarded a patent for the "Method And System For Presenting Data Over A Network Based On Network User Choices And Collecting Real-Time Data Related To Said Choices" on May 15th of this year, Treehouse is going after Turbine for what they consider infringement with both Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online. The lawyer-speak in the suit itself is not for the faint of heart, but a few of the claims include the fact that LotRO and DDO are "character-enabled" and "have character-attribute data linked with one or more character data."
We can't help but be reminded of the Worlds.com vs. NCsoft lawsuit filed a few years ago claiming an infringement on "scalable chat," but it seems a bit far-fetched that a patent suit can be won over games that came out several years before the patent was even issued. But hey, that's why we write about video games and don't swing a gavel around.
