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December 11, 2008 Worlds.com Hires IP Firm for Licensing: To Begin Contacting Virtual World Companies "Shortly" Worlds.com and General Patent Corporation announced today that they had selected intellectual property law firm Lerner David Littenberg Krumholz & Mentlik LLP (LDLKM) to enforce Worlds' patents. Together the two patents currently owned by Worlds describe what sounds like the underpinnings for a wide range of client/server-based 3D virtual worlds, according to the company, if not pretty much all of them. While GPC Chairman and CEO Alexander Poltorak told me that the companies don't have any specific targets in mind, products from Second Life to World of Warcraft could be affected. "It's a system of managing avatars in virtual worlds," explained Poltorak. "For whoever is working and developing virtual worlds, it's very relevant." Worlds owns U.S. Patent Nos. 6,219,045 titled "Scalable Virtual World Chat Client-Server System" and 7,181,690 titled "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space." Together the claims describe systems for tracking the spatial relationships of avatars and objects in client/server systems and managing their interactions as well as how many can be displayed at any given time. The patents prompted Sean F. Kane of Drakeford & Kane LLC to blog this morning asking, "Does Worlds.com Hold the Patent for the Virtual World?" When asked for his thoughts on the announcement, Kane explained, with the caveat that he is not a patent attorney, that "given how broad the patents are, they can make claims against a lot of virtual worlds and MMO people. Given the tenor of the announcement, it would seem to me that their intent is either to make claims or to file actions against those they consider infringing." Poltorak said that the company would "very shortly be contacting various players in the virtual worlds community" to offer licensing opportunities. "We are looking at various products and evaluating various technologies," he explained. "Our immediate objective is to make these patents available, and we hope that the industry will recognize that Worlds.com has been a pioneer in developing this technology since 1994 and 1995." GPC is currently prosecuting other patents through the application process that it says are continuations of the original patents for the same technology. Several IP lawyers declined to comment on the validity of the patents or on whom they might be applied to, though it seems safe to say that we'll be hearing about more activity soon. "They are aggressive and they attempt to protect their clients rights based on a licensing agreement or litigation," Kane said of GPC. "To the extent that they've hired a firm with extensive and successful litigation history, it would point to litigation. It's difficult to say where this is going to go out at the moment, but it'll be very interesting to watch. It could very well be a watershed moment. Posted at 02:21 PM in Legal | Permalink Technorati Tags: General Patent Corporation, LDLKM, Patents, Virtual Worlds, Worlds.com Digg This | Save to del.icio.us
