On June 4, 2018, Groove Digital filed a lawsuit in the District Court of Delaware alleging King.com infringed upon U.S. Pat. No. 9,454,762 (the '762 Patent), titled "System and Method for Delivery of Content to a Network Device." Groove Digital claims the '762 Patent relates to push notifications for mobile apps. In the Complaint, King's game, Candy Crush Saga, infringes upon the '762 Patent.

Claim 1 of the '762 Patent reads:

A system for delivering information to a networked device of a user, the system comprising:

a microprocessor running a software application for delivering an applet application to the networked device and managing the delivery of the applet application to the networked device, wherein the applet application passively deploys one or more applets at a time of deployment,

wherein the applet application provides for delivery of content to the networked device and a display of the content in a predetermined portion of a user display that is less than an entire display of the networked device, by the one or more applet, wherein the one or more applet is configured to deploy at least one of independent of or in conjunction with an internet browser window, wherein an internet browser is configured to deploy subsequent to deployment of the one or more applets based on at least one action or inaction of the user, wherein at least one of the applets is configured to become idle upon deployment of the internet browser, and wherein the deployment of the one or more applets is such that at the time of deployment of the one or more applets the user can continue to operate the networked device in a state prior to the deployment of the one or more applets;

a first database coupled to the microprocessor and storing a first set of information relating to the user; and

a second database coupled to the microprocessor and including a second set of information for comparison to the first set of information,

wherein the microprocessor compares the first set of information to the second set of information to determine whether the content should be transmitted to the networked device for display by the one or more applets. ('762 patent, col. 14, lines 9-43).

The '762 Patent has an interesting prosecution history. Samuel Gaidemak and Paul Chacko filed the '762 Patent on March 17, 2006, but the USPTO did not issue the patent until September 27, 2016. During those ten years, the PTO issued eleven office actions against the '762 Patent. On average a patent will face three or four office actions. The more office actions a patent faces, the more prosecution history estoppel the patent acquires, which is used to narrow the patent's claims and restrict the owner's use of the doctrine of equivalents. Groove Digital is asserting the doctrine of equivalents in addition to allegations of literal infringement. King has not yet filed an Answer in response to the Complaint.

Groove Digital is also suing United Bank for infringing the '762 Patent. Normally, we do not report on non-video game related case, but this is the only other lawsuit in which the '762 Patent is asserted. Groove Digital filed the lawsuit against United Bank on December 1, 2017, in the Eastern District of Virginia. The Complaint in that lawsuit alleges that United Bank's mobile banking app infringes the '762 Patent by using push notifications, and the Complaint filed against United Bank is very similar to the Complaint filed against King. United Bank has only filed a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. These lawsuits against United Bank and King could be the start of Groove Digital suing every mobile app developer that uses push notifications, so it will be interesting to see if Apple takes notice (in view of the integrated push notification technology built into iOS).

We will continue to follow Groove Digital's lawsuit against King and provide updates when available.

On April 2, 2018, PUBG Corporation and PUBG Santa Monica, Inc. (“PUBG”) sued NetEase, Inc. and NetEase Information Technology Corp. (“NetEase”) over alleged copyright infringement, trade dress infringement, and unfair competition.  The complaint alleges, in short, that NetEast’s titles Rules of Survival and Knives Out are knockoffs of PUBG’s massively popular Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds.


PUBG’s lengthy (155 page!) complaint provides a listing of all instances in which Rules of Survival and/or Knives Out allegedly copied Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds.  Some examples, as alleged by PUBG:

• “Pre-Play Area” – Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, Rules of Survival, and Knives Out feature a pre-play area “where players can meet each other and try out weapons while waiting for other players to join.”
• Play Map – The layout of the maps in all three games are “strikingly similar.”
• “Scenes and Locations” – Both Rules of Survival and Knives Out feature, like Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, locations such as a shooting range, a rural aqueduct, a port with shipping containers, a farm area, two-story hexagonal towers, and the like.
• Air Jump – In Rules of Survival and Knives Out, as in Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, players jump at any point from an airplane onto various portions of a map.  Players may then descend in freefall and release a parachute. 
• Weapons – For example, where Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds features a M416, Rules of Survival features an MA14.  Both games also feature, for example, red dot sights, vertical foregrips, bullet loops, and other similar accessories.
• Frying Pans – Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, Rules of Survival, and Knives Out feature frying pan weapons. 
• “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner” – Both Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds and Rules of Survival use this phrase to indicate the winner of a match.  Rules of Survival also has a rubber chicken which may be used as a melee weapon. 
• Shrinking Gameplay Area – Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, Rules of Survival, and Knives Out have a progressively shrinking gameplay area and a timer which warns players when a next shrinking event will occur.

Individually, all of the above examples could arguably be found in other video games or in real life.  For example, the M416 in Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds’ is arguably a version of the Heckler & Koch HK416.  As another example, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds is far from the progenitor of the term “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner,” as the term originated during the Depression. It seems likely that PUBG will argue that the combination of such elements, rather than the individual elements themselves, has been copied by NetEase.

PUBG is far from the first game company to sue creators of alleged copycat game titles.  Tetris Holding, the company that owns the rights to Tetris, won a battle against a copycat app.  In that case, the Court found that the fact that game mechanics and game rules are not entitled to protection “does not mean, and cannot mean, that any and all expression related to a game rule or game function is unprotectable” such that Tetris Holdings was “entitled to copyright protection for the way in which it [chose] to express game rules or game play as one would be to the way in which one chooses to express an idea.”  Similar battles occurred between the creators of The Sims Social and The Ville and between the creators of Triple Town and Yeti Town.  Our firm (Banner & Witcoff), for example, represented Wargaming.net in a similar dispute against Changyou.com involving an alleged knockoff of Wargaming’s World of Tanks.

Plaintiffs Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC and Lucasfilm Entertainment Company Ltd. LLC (“Lucasfilm”) have challenged attempts by defendant Ren Ventures Ltd. and Sabacc Creative Industries Ltd. (“Ren”) to dismiss a lawsuit by Lucasfilm alleging that Ren infringes Lucasfilm’s copyrights and trademarks and has violated unfair competition laws.  The game at issue is Ren’s “Sabacc,” a mobile card game which allegedly infringes Lucasfilm’s Star Wars trademarks.



“Sabacc” is the fictional game of chance in the Star Wars universe that was played by Han Solo to win the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian.  Lucasfilm has sold various real-life versions of the Sabacc card game, though Ren disputes the significance of such sales.  According to Lucasfilm, on the eve of the release of the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Dec. 18, 2015), Ren–without permission from Lucasfilm–released the mobile card game “Sabacc.”  Videos of the game available online suggest that it contains imagery which allegedly depict Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, and a holographic Millennium Falcon.  Lucasfilm sued Ren on December 21, 2017.

Ren’s Motion to Dismiss argues, in part, that because Sabacc is a “fictional good,” it cannot be amenable to trademark protection or an unfair competition violation.  Lucasfilm’s Opposition to Ren’s Motion to Dismiss calls Ren’s arguments “specious,” asserting that Ren “ignore[s] all cases that have granted common law trademark protection to fictional elements of expressive works.” 

As many franchises sell real versions of in-universe games (Star Trek’s Tri-Dimensional Chess and The Witcher’s Gwent come to mind), the ruling in this case may have implications far beyond Sabacc.