Turbine, Sony, Blizzard, NCSoft, and Jagex Sued for Patent Infringement

OK, LISTEN! Paltalk Holdings is tackling Turbine, Sony, Activision Blizzard, NCSoft, and Jagex, crying "patent infringement, patent infringement!" The latest trend as of late seems to be suing others -- Evony suit against blogger for libel, Linden Labs is being sued for trademark violations, Turbine is suing Atari, NCsoft is being sued for patent infringement,now five companies are all being sued over a patent dispute.

The Boston Globe has reported that Paltalk Holdings Inc. has filed a complaint in Texas against Sony Corp., Activision Blizzard Inc., Turbine Inc., NCsoft Corp., and Jagex Ltd. all for games that violate their patent on computers sharing data so that all users can see the same virtual environment. The games in question are EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Guild Wars, and Rune Scape.

According to the company, it purchased two patents from HearMe back in 2002 to cover technologies for sharing data across a network of computers so that all users can view the same virtual environment in real time. Obviously games such as EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and other MMORPGs feature this type of gameplay, and Paltalk claims that these games violate the patents it purchased.

Paltalk already defended these patents against Microsoft, claiming that the multiplayer features of the Halo franchise violated the patents. Microsoft eventually chickened out and settled with the company out of court by paying an undisclosed wad of cash to license the Paltalk patents. At the time of this writing, Turbine, Sony and the other developers have not commented on the lawsuit, however it's believed that PalTalk may have the upper hand thanks to Microsoft caving in and a plaintiff-friendly courtroom.