How to be a Patent Troll

I actually want to talk about my experience at Comic-Con, but there's something I wanna bring up.  It seems the developers of Minecraft are being sued.  The patent in question?  Patent number 6,857,067, which prevents unauthorized access to data stored on an electronic device.

But they aren't the only ones involved


This morning, Notch tweeted that he awakened and discovered he'd been sued for patent infringement. And while he expressed confidence that this was nothing more than a money-grab, he later railed against software patents, calling them "evil."

Mojang isn't the only target of plaintiff Uniloc, which also filed claims yesterday against Halfbrick, the makers of Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride; Gameloft, an enormous publisher of mobile titles; Square Enix, the publishers of Final Fantasy and Hitman; Laminar Research, creators of the X-Plane flight simulator, and Electronic Arts, who brought you Need for Speed: The Run.

And you obviously know where this is filed at.


The fact these claims also were filed in East Texas, one of the friendliest federal districts for patent troll claims, also indicates this is a big celebrity shakedown. The patent in question was issued in 2005. It is for "a system and method ... for preventing unauthorized access to electronic data stored on an electronic device."

Ahh yes.  Good ol Texas.  Remember in 2004 when American Video Graphics of Marshall, Texas went to sue video game makers over a 3D Graphics patent?


The massive programme of legal action against alleged infringers of a series of patents covering graphics and other computing techniques has been extended to console hardware vendors Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

The news follows yesterday's revelation that 18 PC hardware companies had also been targeted, alongside 12 games software publishers.

 

The console makers are accused of infringing two patents, 5,109,520 and 4,734,690. The latter essentially covers representing a dynamic 3D environment and objects on a 2D display, and is the same patent the games publishers have been alleged to have violated. The former is entitled 'Image frame buffer access speedup by providing multiple buffer controllers each containing command FIFO buffers', and is cited in the action against the PC makers.

In each case, the plaintiff is seeking a jury trial, and wants it the defendants to cough up legal costs, damages and both pre- and post-judgement interest on the damages.
With patent applications stretching right back to the mid-1980s, why has it taken so long for key hardware vendors and games software publishers to be sued for alleged infringement of a series of patents covering 3D graphics? Because the current owner of the intellectual property in question only took possession on 16 June 2004.

The current owner is one American Video Graphics, of Marshall, Texas. It's the company on whose behalf Dallas-based law firm McKool Smith - the name most associated with the current litigation - has filed complaints with the District Court for Eastern Texas against HP, Dell, IBM, Gateway, Acer, Sony, Toshiba, MPC, Systemax, Fujitsu, Micro Electronics, Matsushita, Averatec, Polywell, Twinhead, Sharp, Uniwill and JVC.
Games publishers on the receiving end of a writ include Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Activision, Atari, THQ, Vivendi Universal, Sega, Square Enix, Tecmo, Lucasarts, Namco and Ubisoft.

Ahh Texas.   Land of telling those Video Game lords not to mess with em, even if you had nothing to do with em.


Works Cited:
Kotaku