Today it was found in a United States District court that patent claims that were filed by McRO, Inc. d.b.a. Planet Blue against Activision Blizzard for the use of lip synchronization and Facial Expression Technology in Call of Duty, Skylanders and StarCraft II are to be dismissed.
Chris Walther, Chief Legal Officer of Activision Blizzard said “Meritless patent cases such as this stifle innovation and the creative process across the industry. “We will aggressively defend our investments in the innovative franchises at Activision Publishing and Blizzard Entertainment, as we did in this case with Call of Duty, Skylanders and StarCraft II, from entities whose sole purpose is to use patent litigation to hold innovative companies captive for monetary gain.”
Activision Blizzard argued in court that the two patents in question were invalid because they were based on long practiced and well known lip-synching methods used on a computer. The court agreed with this argument and concluded that the patents lacked any inventive concept, the claims against Activision Blizzard for the alleged infringement of the two patents would inhibit rather than promote the progress of the arts and so they were dismissed.
