Allow me to introduce you to Michael Donnelly and MDY Industries, LLC. Michael Donnelly invented a clever automation bot (robot) for World of Warcraft (WoW) called “Glider” that allowed subscribers to bypass the tedious requirement of actually playing the game during earlier levels, allowing them to come back after a meal or a movie to a character that has increased in levels and gathered a load of loot. Evidently, the demand for having your game play itself for you was higher than one might anticipate, as Donnelly went on to form MDY Industries, LLC, and licensed over 120,000 Glider bots to WoW subscribers.
IP Check: Who owns World of Warcraft?
If you said “Blizzard,” then you were right! As it turns out, Blizzard was not too happy about Donnelly essentially making a living off of their proprietary software. After dealing with hundreds of thousands of complaints from non-glider subscribers of WoW, Blizzard modified created Warden, software designed to detect hackers and bots, and also began focusing on the finer details of the WoW EULA, including the section that restricts licensees from using “cheats, automation software (bots), hacks, mods or any other unauthorized third-party software designed to modify the World of Warcraft experience.”
IP Lesson: When you purchase a video game, you’re only purchasing the license to play it; you are not the owner.
In the end, MDY Industries kicked the proverbial bucket by circumventing these countermeasures and allowing licensees to do so as well. Donnelly and MDY Industries, LLC were found liable under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and the Glider and MDY Industries, LLC are officially no more. You can get the details here. I would say good riddance, but I think this particular attempt at protecting intellectual property may have been slightly trivial. However, preserving the intended experience for subscribers and ensuring that everyone is playing by the same rules is vital to keeping customers happy.
For a less trivial application of IP protection, we should turn to more recent events. Enter Defense of the Ancients, an Action/RTS mod for a Warcraft III expansion. Technically, DotA is in the public domain, as it was created and modified by a variety of authors, and is free to play. Now Valve is regularly updating their most recent creation, DotA 2 . But, wait! Wasn’t DotA a mod for a Warcraft III expansion?
IP Check: Who owns Warcraft III?
You can stop answering; these questions are rhetorical. Activision-Blizzard is pretty miffed about Valve’s presumptuous claim on the DotA trademark. While it’s true that Activision-Blizzard does not own the rights to DotA, the public at large has already made a direct connection between the two. It is on these grounds that the game publishing giant is filing its suit. I’m not sure how this will turn out, but I can see why Activision-Blizzard would be upset about the situation. While it’s not like them to make assumptions about intellectual property, who would have thought that another publisher would ever attempt to claim a trademark so largely associated with Activision-Blizzard?
IP Lesson: You cannot register a trademark that is already directly associated with an existing company. For instance, if I wanted to launch a new portable gaming device and call it an iBox, Microsoft and Apple would both be sure to take notice due to the i- prefix (commonly associated with Apple products) and the –Box suffix (commonly associated in video games with Microsoft’s Xbox console).
Of course, even a company as awesome as Activision-Blizzard can miss an obscure patent here and there. Did you know that Walker Digital, LLC has over 500 patents and patent applications in its IP portfolio? One of those patents is essentially a method for allowing game players to collaborate online for tournament play. Jay Walker believes that Activision-Blizzard and Zynga have both infringed upon that patent by releasing various games that allowed players to gather online for tournament play. It’s all in this document, if you want to read about it.
This scenario reminds me of those cyber squatters who register a domain name containing an unregistered trademark before the company using the trademark has the opportunity to register the domain name. Confusing, right? These cyber squatters then turn around and sell the domain name to the company at an inflated price.
IP Lesson: Thanks to the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, we don’t really have to worry about cyber squatters anymore.
What Walker Digital, LLC essentially did was patent an online business method that they really had no intention of following through on with subsequent products. Their goal was obviously to license this patent out to companies like Activision-Blizzard and Zynga, or to file suit when they felt said companies had infringed upon that patent. Walker Digital has since filed suit against over 100 companies for patent infringement. The decision will fall on one or many judges as to whether the patent in question pertains to an “obvious” business method, and whether the companies in question are truly infringing upon this business method.
So, for those of you who think the entertainment software industry is all fun and games, think again. Anyone will tell you that, insofar as business operations and intellectual property are concerned, where there is money, there will be legal battles. Activision-Blizzard is the number one publisher of entertainment software products in the world, and they defend that title day in and day out with an ever-increasing docket of lawsuits. My advice to anyone looking to launch a product or service in the entertainment industry: study your state and federal laws pertaining to Intellectual Property.
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