It appears that congress is again going to try to pass patent reform legislation. Rather than recreate the wheel, and based on other deadlines I have today, feel free to read the summary article over at Patently-O. Dennis does a fine job summarizing it and provides copies of the house and senate versions of the bill (which are somewhat different--so this might take a while... again).

Sorry for the short post, but I at least wanted to get the information out there.

Zynga Game Network on February 27, 2009, filed suit against CLZ Concepts, Jeff Chen, and James Zhang asserting copyright infringement. The case is 3:09-cv-00854-EMC in the District Court for the Northern District of California. We are obtaining a copy of the complaint and have added this case to our watch list. More details to follow.

On February 24, 2009, Square Enix settled another lawsuit. According to its press release, the lawsuit named at least four national wholesalers of unlicensed sword replicas and their principals that have infringed Square Enix's FINAL FANTASY® franchise of videogames and CG-animated film, specifically its copyright and trademark rights in the swords.

My personal favorite quote is where the defendants issued a statement as follows: "We regret having sold unauthorized replica merchandise based on the Final Fantasy franchise to our customers. We would not have begun importing and selling these swords if we knew that Square Enix would respond so aggressively to stop us. We will never make this mistake again."

WHAT?!?! They are actually admitting to the "I wouldn't have done it if I knew I would have been caught" defense?!?! So it's ok to infringe other's intellectual property rights as long as you're not caught? Great. Nice one. Way to fall on that sword you were selling. In any event, the consent judgment includes $600k payment to Square Enix, so yes, the infringers WILL think twice about doing this again.

In another press release dated Feb. 12, 2008, the lawsuit was noted to have been filed and was "a result of cooperation with the United States Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol, whose agents seized a crate of counterfeit replica swords." Nice to hear our DHS guys are on the job. Keep up the good work.

(Thanks to Tim Hsieh at Greenberg Traurig for bringing this to my attention.)

Well I finally got around to upgrading the blog to Google's new beta service, so we've updated the look and feel a little bit, while keeping the overall simple header theme. New features include the ability to filter posts by labels, better subscription options, and better integration of useful add-ons such as patent searching.

I apologize to anyone who was following the old atom feed, because I think its broken now. We will be updating other broken links as soon as possible, but you will need to resubscribe using the new subscription options.

Thanks for reading!

Harmonix and Viacom jointly filed suit in the District of Massachusetts against Konami for patent infringement. The lawsuit alleges Konami’s “ROCK REVOLUTION” video game infringes U.S. Pat. No., 7,459,624 entitled "Game controller simulating a musical instrument." The patent issued December 2, 2008 and consists of two independent claims, both of which are methods “for providing [a] realistic interaction by a player with a music-based video game using a game controller simulating a guitar.” The claims appear to relate to music-based video games that simulate a hammer-on or pull-off technique of playing a musical instrument. Specifically, claims 1 recites:

1. A method for providing realistic interaction by a player with a music-based video game using a game controller simulating a guitar and having a strum bar and a plurality of fret buttons, the method comprising: a) displaying to a player first target musical data associated with a musical composition; b) receiving first music performance input from the player comprising activation of a first one of a plurality of fret buttons and a strum bar; c) displaying to a player second target musical data associated with the musical composition, the second target musical data visually indicating to a player that the musical event represented by the second target musical data is amenable to a hammer-on technique; [and] d) receiving second music performance input from the player consisting essentially of activation of a second one of a plurality of fret buttons.

Claim 15, the other independent claim, is similar to claim 1, however, differs in regards to elements (c) and (d), which recite:

c) displaying to a player second target musical data associated with the musical composition, the second target musical data visually indicating to a player that the musical event represented by the second target musical data is amenable to a pull-off technique; [and] d) receiving second music performance input from the player consisting essentially of deactivation of one of a plurality of fret buttons.

The lawsuit is Harmonix Music Systems, Inc. et al. v. Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd et. al., Case No. 1:09-cv-10206-RWZ, U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. We will continue to monitor the lawsuit.

I don't normally post non-legal content, but this one is a good resource for budding video game designers: 70+ Open Courseware Links for Game Designers and Developers. Most of the resources appear to be links to MITs open course program, or other universities with similar offerings, but this is the first compilation of all such resources that I have seen in one place. Topics include Game Development, Arts & Media Studies, Theory & Thinking, Analysis, Storytelling, Interaction & Decisionmaking, Probability, Design, Programming & Tools, Practical Skills, Game Genres & Uses, and Issues. If anyone is looking to brush up on skills, this looks like a great place to start. When you build your game and need legal advice, give me a call. Good luck!

From Leigh Jones, Associate editor at the National Law Journal:

--In what is considered the first event of its kind, Santa Clara University School of Law is holding an open house in the virtual world of Second Life on Jan. 22.

Visitors to Second Life, an Internet-based universe where real-life users assign themselves as cartoon characters and go to virtual, animated locations, will travel virtually to Santa Clara Island to see the school.

The event is designed to attract potential students and emphasize the law school's close ties with the technology industry in the Silicon Valley area of California.

"We need to meet prospective law students where they are, and more and more, we find potential law students on various online arenas, including virtual worlds," said Julia Yaffee, senior assistant dean of external relations, in a press release.

Hosting the two-hour event that begins at 6 p.m. West Coast time is Jeanette Leach, dean of admissions. She will attend as her own self-created avatar character, Penny Canucci. Second Life residents — who total 15 million — can tour the school and see a video of Dean Donald Polden as himself, not an avatar. Visitors also can ask admissions staff questions and get information about applying to the school.--

Kudos to Santa Clara Law School for this unique event. I'll probably stop by and check it out, too, so be on the lookout for my avatar (Aviator Kidd).

I just wanted to take a minute and let everyone know that I will be speaking at GDC 2009 (March 25-27, 2009) this year. I'm not sure which day my presentation will be, but I will be presenting patent lawsuit case studies that are relevant to the video game industry. Let me know if you'll be in SF for GDC in March. I'd love to meet more of the people who have responded to my posts. See you there!

You know, I've been waiting for over a year since I first heard about Guitar Rising, a Guitar Hero style video game that you can play with a REAL guitar. It seems to be the holy grail of interactivity--if you win the game, you have ACTUAL SKILLS you can use in real life to play an instrument. But it never seems to come to fruition. As of this morning, Guitar Rising's web site still hasn't changed or been updated to give us any glimmer of hope that a release is forthcoming.

Well it seems someone has now beaten them to the punch: Disney. Yes, THAT Disney. Disney's Guitar Star will be directed towards tweens at first, but if you can really play it with any guitar, then I might just pick up a copy myself and plug in my own axe. The software with a bundled 3/4 length guitar will be about $200, and available starting summer '09, but at least its a start!

Now I DO wonder what Gibson thinks about this, in view of their patent portfolio that they are asserting against Activision and the court's recent claim construction in that case...

Either way, Disney has the money to take a license or defend a lawsuit, so hopefully this product will actually see the light of day!

Merry Christmas, you've been sued. It's not uncommon for plaintiffs to file lawsuits around the holidays in order to "turn the screws" on defendants, and that appears to be the case here. Worlds.com sued NCSoft (maker of City of Heroes, City of Villains, Tabula Rasa) on December 24, 2008, in the Eastern District of Texas over alleged infringement of U.S. Pat. No. 7,181,690, titled "System and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space." Representative claim 1 reads as follows:

1. A method for enabling a first user to interact with other users in a virtual space, wherein the first user and the other users each have an avatar and a client process associated therewith, and wherein each client process is in communication with a server process, wherein the method comprises: (a) receiving a position of less than all of the other users' avatars from the server process; and (b) determining, from the received positions, a set of the other users' avatars that are to be displayed to the first user, wherein steps (a) and (b) are performed by the client process associated with the first user.

While this claim may seem rather broad, it would appear that it has priority back to Nov. 12, 1996, so to invalidate the patent you would need to demonstrate that you did this before Nov. 12, 1996. This also means, however, that the patent will expire on November 16, 2016 (plus any patent term extension), so Worlds.com is likely trying to maximize their enforceable duration for this patent.

The case is Worlds.com Inc. v. NCSoft Corp., case number 08-508, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. We have added it to our watch list and will keep you updated of any significant progress in the case.