Activision Blizzard has lost a patent infringement lawsuit instituted against them by Acceleration Bay leading to the jury slamming them with a fine of $23.4 Million. The legal battle which spanned nine years eventually came to an end on May 3.
The jury ruled that Activision Blizzard infringed on two of Acceleration Bay’s patents that were related to networking and broadcasting technology. The technology was used in two Activision Blizzard multiplayer games, namely World of Warcraft for which they were fined $18 million, and for Call of Duty for which they were fined 5.4 million. The name of the jury in the case was redacted.
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Acceleration Bay filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. One of the questions that the jury was asked to which they answered ‘yes’ was, “Did Acceleration Bay prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Activision’s products…infringe one or more claims of the following Asserted Patents?”
Reacting to the ruling, a spokesperson for Activision said in a statement sent to Insider Gaming, “While we are disappointed, we believe there is a strong basis for appeal. We have never used the patented technologies at issue in our games.”
Before the verdict, a spokesperson for Activision had called the lawsuit baseless, pointing to the age of the patent. “These are baseless claims,” said the spokesperson. “The technology at issue was invented nearly 25 years ago. We have never used it in our games—nor would we.”
Acceleration Bay has filed a similar patent infringement lawsuit against Take-Two Interactive at the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit where they asserted that the GTA maker has infringed on four of their patents.
“The patents disclose a networking technology that allegedly improves upon pre-existing communication techniques because it is ‘suitable for the simultaneous sharing of information among a large number of the processes that are widely distributed’” explained the filing against Take-Two.
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Acceleration Bay lost that case. The jury at that time said, “We dismiss Acceleration Bay’s appeal on mootness grounds insofar as it relates to the ’344 and ’966 patents, and we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment that the accused video games do not infringe the ’069 and ’497 patents and the district court’s construction of the claims at issue of the ’069 patent.”
Acceleration Bay also has a similar lawsuit against Electronic Arts. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware in 2019 while that of Take-Two was filed in 2021.
