While Electronic Arts was named the worst company in America by gamers recently, the other giant in gaming, Activision Blizzard, has been hit with something potentially worse – another lawsuit. On March 30, Worlds Inc. filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, Inc., Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and Activision Publishing, Inc. in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.  Activision’s World of Warcraft and Call of Duty video games have been identified in the complaint as infringing on Worlds’ patents.

This comes on the heels of ongoing litigation between Activision and former Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella over the Call of Duty franchise. That legal battle has lawsuits heading in both directions with the showdown currently heading to court in California.

The issue is over Worlds Inc. US patents numbers 8,082,501, 7,493,558, 7,945,856 and 7,181,690 titled “System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space” and has additional continuation claims in process before the U.S Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO).  These patents relate to computer architecture for three-dimensional graphical multi-user interactive virtual world systems. Such systems are used in Massive Multiplayer Online games (MMOs).

Worlds’ patents cover technologies and methods relating to a highly scalable architecture for a 3D graphical, multi-user, interactive virtual world system. In certain situations, multiple users interact within this virtual world environment, each viewing the virtual world from their own perspective. The virtual world shows avatars representing the other users who are neighbors of the user viewing the virtual world. Worlds’ patents include, but are not limited to, the various aspects of the information transmission and processing that allow the users to view in real time where other users and background objects are in relation to their own position as they move about in the virtual space.

Thom Kidrin, Worlds Inc. CEO, explains why his company is suing Activision now and why this litigation could impact other major players in the video game space in this exclusive interview.

Why are you targeting Activision Blizzard first with this lawsuit?

We believe there is plentiful and strong evidence of infringement of our patents by Activision Blizzard, Inc. et al and that we have an excellent chance of success in this case.

Can you explain in laymen’s terms what your patent covers?

Worlds Inc.’s patents cover load balancing between the user’s PC and the host server commonly known as a client/server architecture. These methods filter the number of visible avatars on the screen at one time when there are hundreds of thousands of users online simultaneously.

When Worlds’ initial patents were filed in 1995 the major constraints for multiplayer online gaming were bandwidth and PC processing power. Worlds developed methodology and techniques that allowed large numbers of users to log into the same virtual world from around the world concurrently without being locked out of the site due to reaching prefixed population limits.

In the late ‘90s users were limited to between 10 to 15 concurrent users per room and if you logged in a few minutes after your friends did, you could not play with them because the room had already reached its limit and been closed to additional users.

As the confluence of separate internet service providers (ISPs), such as Compserve, GE Net and Delphi, to name a few, evolved into the World Wide Web, the need for datastream management methods for avatars in a virtual world across different PC platforms accessing the web at varying internet speeds became a crucial problem to solve. Players wanted to play together even if they logged on at different times and expected a fluid user experience moving within graphically rich virtual environments. Worlds’ technology solved those problems.   Court Date is June 2013