Hi, and welcome back to Legal Geek. This week, we cover the first decisions coming down in the massive legal battle over patents alleged to cover basic aspects of successful video game apps such as Clash of Clans.
A company called Gree holds various patents on video game improvements in Japan and the U.S., and they have started to assert such patents against successful game developers such as Supercell, the maker of Clash of Clans and Clash Royale among other titles. This has launched a worldwide patent battle between Gree and Supercell that is reminiscent of other massive worldwide patent disputes, such as Apple vs. Samsung over mobile phones.
This legal battlefield includes a lawsuit pending in Japan between the companies as well as a series of validity challenges filed against Gree's patents by Supercell in the U.S. Patent Office. Supercell filed 18 petitions for post grant review or inter parties review challenging that many Gree patents as invalid under U.S. Patent rules, and considering each PGR or IPR process can cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per petition, this is clearly an early step in a multi-million dollar patent war.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board, the administrative judges who handle such PGR's at the Patent Office, instituted trials on 10 of the 18 Supercell petitions, which means 10 Gree patents are going through the process of detailed validity review this year. Most of them are challenged based on the Supreme Court's decision in Alice v. CLS Bank, which set standards for what Abstract ideas are not eligible for patent protection in the U.S.
While this battle between the parties may merit future updates, this segment reports on the first couple significant decisions occurring in these PGR proceedings which the Patent Trial and Appeal Board handed down this month.
First, one of Gree's patents relating to "improving unexpectedness, dramatic impact, and taste when medals or game items are provided as a reward to a player" was stricken down as invalid because it was merely covering a patent-ineligible Abstract idea. Gree had tried to distinguish their patent from the wagering game rules that have been deemed invalid Abstract ideas by Federal Circuit court opinions in recent years, but the Appeal Board did not find this distinction persuasive. This is actually the second Gree patent to fall afoul of Alice rules so far, joining another one that tried to broadly cover a method for displaying a battle scene in a computer game.
Second, another Gree patent covering how to execute a battle in a video game was also indicated to be invalid as an Abstract idea by the Appeal Board in a separate proceeding, but the Appeal Board granted Gree the right to amend their claims to add in more detail that may help the claims be directed to patent-eligible subject matter. Such requests to amend have only been granted by the Appeal Board in about 10% of PGR proceedings over the past few years, so this is a rare and significant win for Gree. The key will now be for Gree's counsel to develop claim amendments that properly recite how the battle execution system improves the computer system by achieving reduced processing loads and quicker execution times, as these features have been deemed critical to showing that the Abstract idea of the claims is limited to a practical application, one of the ways you can achieve patent eligibility under the Alice rules.
The battle will go on between these two companies and it looks like it could help craft precedent that will define patent eligibility in the video game field for the next few years.
The Bottom Line is: Supercell is a highly profitable company and it makes sense to defend against broad-scale patent infringement claims and attacks to avoid losing all of that profit to Gree. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board is continuing to apply the recent decisions I've been critical of that say game rules and mechanics by themselves are too Abstract for patent eligibility, so perhaps some of these cases could lead to an appeal of that issue to overturn what I personally believe to be bad precedent hurting all game designers in the tabletop and video game fields. We will continue to monitor for such developments.
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