World Inc. needs to go away.

Check you World Inc.'s patent http://www.google.com/patents/US7181690 entitled "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space."  They are trying to sue the big game game companies like Blizzard and Activision for having games in which players view the virtual world from their point of view in which they are represented by an avatar and are allowed to interact within that virtual environment via a message handling system.  I believe they have already settled out of court with NCsoft for an undisclosed sum of ill-gotten cash.  I cannot properly express my rage when I think about this company's strategic abuse of the US patent system. 

This would be the equivalent of me designing a system for land transport module that traverses the local landscape via a rigid frame with attached wheels that are encased in rubber and individually articulated and reinforced as to absorb impact from high speed motion.  Furthermore the module has a energy system that uses liquid hydro-carbon fuel source refined from crude oil that propels the module in a straight line but has a control system that allows the module to change its heading by changing the alignment of the front pair of wheels.  Of course I would have to submit a viable patent and maybe even produce a module as World Inc. has done but this should not give me the precedence to sue GM. 

To world Inc: you are not the first player in this game but you are by far the most deplorable. You did not invent this idea nor did you invent the technology to allow players to navigate a virtual world, chat, and share a game.  MUDs (multi-user dimensions or dungeons or domains depending on what year it was) existed in the 1980s and the MMOs of today are the logical extension of that (your product being but one small player in this theater.) and not your ideas and "patented" property.  Instead of hiring high powered lawyers to extract cash, ultimately, from the end user (also know as the people who don't want to hang out in your lame virtual world) why don't you put some effort into creating a product that the masses would happily spend their expendable entertainment budgets on.  Blizzard did that, Activision did that, etc. 

To the US patent office: WTF!? 

To the US legal system: Be reasonable.

To the major game companies:  I highly doubt that you stole any unique idea from World Inc. in the making of your game.  For each company that appeases World Inc., World Inc. will increase their ability to sue the next biggest company until they are all the way down to my doorstep.  I shiver to think that one day I make a small indie game, that uses the not to novel idea of online play, and I get slapped with a patent infringement lawsuit from some jerks that think they invented online gaming.  Stand up for what is right.