Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of video game giant Activision Blizzard, failed to terminate a lawsuit in federal court in Texas. The lawsuit alleges Activision Blizzard of illegally using the company's patented technology for profit. A U.S. district judge in Austin said Wednesday that Blizzard Entertainment failed to prove that a patent owned by AC Technologies S.A. was invalid. AC Technologies S.A. is located in Luxembourg. Plaintiff Via Vadis, LLC authorized the Luxembourg company to use the patent in the United States. Based on this, the judge rejected Blizzard Entertainment's request to end the lawsuit early and will continue to hear the case as originally planned in February this year.
The decision comes a day after Microsoft just said it plans to buy Activision Blizzard for nearly $69 billion in the largest game deal in history.
The two companies, AC Technologies and Via Vadis, first sued Blizzard Entertainment in 2014. Blizzard Entertainment is the maker of popular games such as the World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Diablo series. It claims that Blizzard's game launcher and system for downloading game files infringe on its patents related to storing and accessing data. After the relevant part of the patent was ruled invalid, the court ruled that Blizzard Entertainment won in 2019. But in 2020, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit resumed the case. Last year, Blizzard proposed a summary judgment on the case, while again arguing that the patent was invalid and that its system was not infringing.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel took a recommendation from a magistrate to dismiss Blizzard's motion. The magistrate argued that, in addition to various other grounds, Blizzard had not shown that some of the plaintiffs' patents were too vague or that its own system did not operate in an infringing manner.
A separate lawsuit filed by AC Technologies and Via Vadis against Amazon over the same patent is still ongoing. A magistrate in the case suggested last Tuesday that the patent should be found to be valid.
(Source: Internet, CIPMAGAZINE)
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