Zynga has been ruled to pay IBM $45 million in damages after the jury ruled the studio infringed on patents from the 1980s. IBM claimed Zynga infringed on two early patents belonging to the company. These patents were included in the FarmVille series as well as Harry Potter: Puzzles and Spells.
The filing has confirmed that both patents have already expired but Zynga used them before the expiration. This means there were substantial damages involved in the lawsuit but Zynga won’t face any further legal issues going forward.
The first patent, known as Patent ‘849 was filed by IBM and introduced a system to deliver applications and adverts which were powered by the end user’s PC and not the origin server. Essentially, this would mean rendering a game or ad in a web browser through your PC hardware. The patent description reads:
“Patent ‘849 introduced novel methods for presenting applications and advertisements in an interactive service that would take advantage of the computing power of each user’s personal computer (PC) and thereby reduce demand on host servers, such as those used by Prodigy which made it more efficient than conventional systems.”
The jury found that Zygna infringed on this patent by harnessing the processing and storage capabilities of the user’s PC. IBM claimed Zynga allowed applications to be composed on the fly from objects stored locally on the PC, reducing reliance on Prodigy’s server and network resources.
The second Patent ‘719 related to improved performance of internet apps by reducing network communication delays. IBM’s patent improves an app’s performance by reducing the number of required interactions between client and server making it easier to develop and update apps.
IBM claimed that these patents were developed with billions of dollars of research and development. It says it protects its patents which are crucial to the innovations and growth of the company. IBM says Zynga used these patents to help fuel billions of dollars in revenue without paying any license fees.
The company went as far as to take all the credit for Zygna’s success. It claims the FarmVille developer used these patents to drive the success of the game way back when it was part of Facebook’s on-device gaming platform.
Zynga did try and combat the lawsuit arguing that the patents were invalid. It even contested the validity of the 1980s patents saying they should never have been issued to IBM in the first place.
Right now, Zynga has been ruled to pay IBM $45 million as a result. However, Take-Two, the owner of the studio says the ruling isn’t supported by any facts. The publisher plans to overturn the verdict reduce or eliminate the damages awards through post-trial motions and appeals.
Source: Arstechnica / Report
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