September 28, 2020
Its 2012 case against Activision Blizzard ginning back up in the District of Massachusetts and its 2019 case against Linden Research (d/b/a Linden Lab) headed toward a mid-November claim construction hearing in the District of Delaware, Worlds, Inc. has sued Microsoft (6:20-cv-00872) in the Western District of Texas. The plaintiff asserts in this new complaint only one of the five patents-in-campaign, the lot of them generally directed to allowing people to interact within a virtual space, with infringement allegations targeting Minecraft Java Edition. This campaign, alive for a decade, has seen patents cut off from provisional applications, certificates of correction, multiple inter partes reviews (IPRs), tussles over real parties-in-interest, and Federal Circuit appeals—with a rebriefed, previously iced Alice challenge, thawing out in an entirely different patent eligibility climate, just ahead.