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Apple, Amazon and others are named in Walker Digital patent suit
Walker Digital is using its patent library as a giant war hammer against more than 100 companies, including Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. Walker Digital is a US-based research and development firm for technology patents and holds over 400 issued and pending patents both in the US and internationally. The company generates an estimated US$200 million in licensing revenue from these patents. Besides its robust patent portfolio, Jay Walker, founder of Walker Digital, also launched Priceline, and the two companies were tied closely together at launch. Reports from AppleInsider and Reuters don't identify the specific technology involved in this lawsuit, but Walker Digital claims Apple et al. are infringing on patents the company created in the 1990s. The Stamford, Connecticut company reportedly reached out to the companies named in this suit, but its request for licensing fell on deaf ears. Walker Digital then filed its patent infringement lawsuit in US District Court in Delaware on Tuesday.
Blizzard, Zynga sued over gaming patent
What's an upstart company to do in a world dominated by deep-pocketed publishers and corporate titans? Sue them, of course! Walker Digital, the brainchild of Priceline.com founder Jay Walker, made headlines by suing Facebook late last year and has now completed a legal double-play by filing a patent infringement suit against Zynga and Activision-Blizzard. The alleged misconduct hinges on a "database driven online distributed tournament system" that Walker Digital claims has been infringed upon for games ranging from Mafia Wars, Wolfenstein, and Call of Duty to Blizzard's behemoth World of Warcraft MMORPG. TechCrunch has all the details, including an embed of the original complaint documents.
Activision Blizzard and Zynga sued over alleged patent infringement
In many industries --- games included -- success leads to two things: Money and lawsuits. You don't get much higher than Activision and Zynga in the world of video games, and TechCrunch reports that both companies have been sued by Walker Digital, a company founded by Jay Walker, best known for founding Priceline.com. Walker Digital alleges that both Zynga and Activision violate its patent, US patent no. 6,425,828, which concerns a "database driven online distributed tournament system." Specifically, Walker alleges that the companies violate the first claim of its patent which describes a "method of conducting a distributed electronic tournament for a plurality of players." The suit names several of the companies' titles, including World of Warcraft, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Mafia Wars and many others (though not Farmville, surprisingly). We're not legal experts, but we'd argue that the word "tournament" implies a finite series of gaming events with a distinct winner, as opposed to the ongoing matches seen in the games cited by Walker Digital. Furthermore, the dependent claims in Walker Digital's patent make it pretty clear that it was intended to describe tournaments with entry fees and prizes, which certainly isn't the case with the games cited. Walker Digital is seeking unspecified damages from Zynga and Activision Blizzard.
