Worlds.com vs NCsoft: Not yet served?
by Tateru Nino 
Jan 5th 2009 at 10:00AM
Filed under: News items, Legal, Virtual worlds
Just to update you all on the progress of the Worlds.com vs NCsoft lawsuit (a patent suit that is pitched to spread to other MMOG and virtual environment developers/operators), the Korea Times reports on 31 December 2008, that NCsoft had yet to be served with notice of the suit.
There are essentially only two ways in which the notice can be legally served to NCsoft in the Republic of Korea to establish jurisdiction over NCsoft as a defendant. One is through formal diplomatic channels, and the other is via the Hague Service Convention. The HSC was established because of the enormous delays in using the formal diplomatic channels. There's a time-limit on the serving of notice, and formal diplomatic channels for civil suits often take quite a bit longer.
The HSC provides an alternative method for service of process, and the Republic of Korea (more commonly known in the West as South Korea) is a signatory to the convention. However, the convention allows the receiving country to establish certain requirements. In this case, the notice of service is not valid unless it is translated into the Korean language.
The clock is already ticking for Worlds.com and their representatives (General Patent Corporation). They only have a limited number of days to serve proper notice in order to establish jurisdiction over NCsoft, and without timely service and consequent jurisdiction, the suit may well go nowhere.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
russel said on 10:24AM 1-05-2009
they should go after blizzard to see what happens, lol
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Slacker said on 12:05PM 1-05-2009
Naw, they are going to go after smaller game first to build up a war chest so they can go after bigger game.
If they went straight to Blizzard they would need tens of millions to fun the suit. By going after NCsoft they can get the safe effect for a couple of million.
If they win they add who knows how much and make it easier to win the next fight by having president on their side.
I really hope Blizzard and Sony are smart and help fight this. Blizzard for the warchest and Sony to say.. EQ predated your worthless patent.
russel said on 12:49PM 1-05-2009
I know the point behind going after NCsoft first, but this is ultimately the pussy move by worlds.com. Of course when sony comes in with Everquest, and blizzard could probably bust out diablo, I hope worlds.com gets crushed.
I should go back in time and tell my great grandpa to create a patent for a glass screen that has an image projected onto it for human viewing so I can sue all the TV manufacturers.
lateris said on 7:21AM 1-06-2009
Did they patent IRC?
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Graill said on 6:25AM 1-06-2009
I am no fan of any of the big gaming companies but a little research shows lobbying for this patent in 1997 not the date stated, this also shows backdating to the stated date of conception, which is fraud, plain and simple. Just the fact the papers were "adjusted to date" is proof of deception.
The patent as of 2007 is a joke in itself, about as legaly binding as paris hilton claiming the phrase "thats hot" is hers, total crap. I hope worlds.com get crushed once the big investigations start, and dont think for one minute the big guys arent already digging.
there is always a nice electronic paper trail somewhere, especially since the timeline is so large.
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ihatehumans said on 11:21PM 1-10-2009
I reckon it's probably just a publicity stunt.
No one had heard of worlds.com, no one gave a damn who they were or what they offered.
Now almost every one who worlds.com would want to offer their service to knows them and will remember them for some time.
The phrase "There's no such thing as bad publicity" comes to mind here. What it all boils down to is that worlds.com has just saved themselves millions of dollars on advertisement and had a one in a billion chance of scoring some settlement money.
Smart move worlds.com, although I do not at all approve of your method.
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Movian said on 8:25AM 1-17-2009
Well if you ask me there is such a thing as bad publicity as by filing this suit they are risking alienating their entire customer base. Any body that loves NCSoft games + any of the other large MMO company's that Worlds.com have hinted they are going after next. Will probably end up boycotting any worlds.com product they release not to mention the possible attacks from script kiddies and maybe even real hackers or hacker groups who don't like this kind of thing.
If you ask me this was a very stupid ploy even if it was for advertising. I Personally love Guild Wars and as a point will now never play a Worlds.com game or use a worlds.com product ever on principle. Where as before i would have tried their software if it looked good. The only reason i can think that they would WANT to do this is if they thought they could actually get some settlement money and then shut down the company so that the execs can retire on a big wad of cash that they (in my opinion) are attempting to STEAL from NCSoft. If this goes through the way that worlds.com wants i am instantly filling a patent that states a car is something that has doors, and engine wheels and can move people from point a to point b. And then Sueing that ass of Toyota, Ford, GM etc because as far as i can tell thats basically what has happened in this situation.
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Tateru Nino said on 8:30AM 1-17-2009
That's what people were saying about another patent suit that made one company the only game in town for a while.
Every hear of the RIM Blackberry? RIM was the worlds.com of that set of patent suits. They won, obviously.