THIRD DIMENSION PATENTED; EVERYONE NOT IN FLATLAND TO PAY ROYALTIES [Author: Lum the Mad]
Hanson to sue Firiona Vie for copyright infringment? This somewhat insane scenario took some steps forward with some statements made by Worlds.com CEO Thom Kidren to Wired in an interview on their patenting the whole concept of online gaming.
“I couldn’t honestly answer where we will go with this, but EverQuest is a top contender for evaluation of their technology to see if it matches what is defined in this patent.”
Worlds.com plans to send a letter to potentially infringing companies stating that the company would like to make the recipient aware of the new patent, to see if there are any infringing products. If so, Worlds.com would then ask to set up a licensing agreement.
Microsoft, developer of Asheron’s Call, and Verant Interactive, developer of EverQuest and a subsidiary of Sony, declined to comment, since they haven’t heard from Worlds.com yet or had a chance to review the patent.
For a company that reported $489,000 in revenue in Q4 2000, picking a fight with behemoths Sony and Microsoft may seem quixotic. But Kidren said he’s ready for a challenge. He said he’s been searching for six years for prior art that could be used to invalidate his patent.
“I don’t expect people to just roll over and accept this,” he said. “I expect they will challenge the patent and try to get it overturned.”
Where I come from, they call that “blackmail”, but I’m not a lawyer. At any rate, Firiona Vie was too busy posing to comment.
