This article of court chronicles series tells us about an intense judicial life of a well-known producer of hits in the world of computer games – the company "Blizzard Entertainment".

Of course, the material does not cover absolutely all court cases involving this company, because I selected (only to my opinion) a few most interesting and noteworthy cases. The selection of cases is arranged according to the chronological principle of filing lawsuits.

v. Internet Gateway, Inc (Blizzard v. BNETD)

The first case in this collection goes back to 1998, when in February 1998 Blizzard released its new game "Starcraft". A few months after this release, Mark Baysinger, a student of the University of California, San Diego, started working on reverse engineering the protocol by which game users connected to the game server using their client software Battle.net.

The result of his job was successful, and Mark published his development of the StarHack emulator online. After he had made this publication, he almost immediately received a letter from Blizzard containing a written warning about the violation of their rights and the termination of such violation. In response, Mark sent questions about exactly which his actions violated company's copyrights. Having received no response from Blizzard, he decided to stop developing the project, but posted the source code of his code on the Internet under the GPL license. This is how the BNETD open source project appeared, which supported the functionality of the official game server Battle.net on an alternative multiplayer game server bnetd.org.

In 2002, Blizzard began beta testing their new product, the Warcraft III game. And in 2003, based on an analysis of the beta version of this company’s game and the Battle.net company server, a fork of BNETD called Warforge appeared, into which support for the functionality of this game was introduced from Blizzard.

A few days after the release of "Warforge", the Internet Gateway company, which provided hosting to the BNETD project, received a similar written warning (the so-called C&D letter) from Blizzard, the content of which was that the creators of BNETD violated Blizzard's rights to the game software created by it.

Since no action was taken to stop using the BNETD project after receiving the warning, Blizzard decided to go to court.

Therefore, in 2002, Blizzard filed a lawsuit against the above-mentioned host and Tim Jung. The latter was the president of the Internet Gateway company, one of the developers of the BNETD project and the system administrator of the domain bnetd.org (the number of respondents was later increased). Blizzard in their lawsuit, in particular, claimed that BNETD was a server program that emulated the service Battle.net, but at the same time they did not check the validity of the CD key to determine whether a client software is used legally to connect to the game server or not. In addition, fragments of Blizzard computer program code were illegally copied and incorporated into the code of the BNETD server code.

In general, Blizzard claimed violation of their copyrights, trademark rights (in relation to Battle.net), as well as unfair competition on the part of the defendants.

During the consideration of court claims in 2004, the court nevertheless ruled in favor of the plaintiff, recognizing that the defendants violated the plaintiff's copyright by reverse engineering his software, as well as bypassing his copyright protection systems (i.e. by not implementing the CD key verification functionality of user client programs on their server).

The defendants decided to appeal the court decision and filed an appeal. In 2005, the Eighth Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the Court of First instance on both important positions, confirming the illegality of reverse engineering and the lack of a CD key verification mechanism.

In general, the BNETD case turned out to be very significant for the industry, since at that time online services were just beginning to become popular. At the same time, the trial has become a kind of guide for software manufacturers on such issues and has shown a very low level of tolerance towards such open-source projects.

v. Daniel Mele and Blizzard Records, Inc

In 2002, Blizzard received a lawsuit from Daniel Mele and the record company Blizzard Records, Inc. regarding the violation by a computer game manufacturer of the rights to the trademark "BLIZZARD RECORDS", owned by the plaintiffs.

According to the text of the lawsuit, Mele began using the BLIZZARD RECORDS trademark back in 1986 in relation to the promotion of musical artists and the distribution of their phonograms. The beginning of the use of the trademark was expressed in the fact that the plaintiffs began promoting the rock band "Zillion". In 1995, they started promoting another band, "Chillin' Sun", and in July 1997 they released the first album of this band under the label "BLIZZARD RECORDS". In 1999, the plaintiffs began selling music tracks from the website blizzardrecords.com. In 2000, Mele filed an application for registration of the name "BLIZZARD RECORDS" as a trademark for use in "computer online retail services for sale of music on CDs and audio cassettes; promotion of performers' phonograms through a global computer information network". In November 2000 Mele licensed to Blizzard Records, Inc. the trademark "BLIZZARD RECORDS".

Gamemaker Blizzard took a position on the lawsuit, according to which their activities did not violate the plaintiff's trademark rights to BLIZZARD RECORDS. Moreover, Blizzard claimed that by the time of registration of their own trademarks "BLIZZARD" and "BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT", the plaintiffs had no longer used the trademark "BLIZZARD RECORDS" in any way.

During the consideration of the case, the court established the following:

In 1986 Mele registered the Blizzard Records Company in Buffalo, New York. The same year, the plaintiffs began to promote the "Zillion" group. In 1987, the last performance of this group took place, and therefore its promotion was discontinued. In 1995, the plaintiffs resumed their activities: they started promoting the band "Chillin' Sun", and in 1997 the label "BLIZZARD RECORDS" released the first album of this group. In 1999, the plaintiffs launched the label's website at blizzardrecords.com and started using it to sell musical phonograms of various artists.

In turn, Blizzard began using the trademarks "BLIZZARD" and "BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT" back in 1994 and filed appropriate applications for registration of these trademarks with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in relation to the class of "computer programs for video and computer games and documentation implemented together with the programs". This trademark registration did not cover classes such as music or soundtracks. Users of Blizzard products first gained access to game soundtracks outside the framework of the games created by the company in December 1995, and the ability to download soundtracks appeared to users in 1998. In 2002, Blizzard applied to the above-mentioned Office to extend the validity of its previously acquired trademark rights to new classes, including musical activities.

Therefore, in order to resolve the dispute between the parties, the court had to determine:

1. Whether the plaintiffs actually stopped using the BLIZZARD RECORDS trademark, and if so, since when such termination took place?
2. Do the rights obtained by Blizzard in connection with its registration of the BLIZZARD and BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT trademarks in 1994 apply to the company's distribution of its own game soundtracks through the sale of CDs and downloads from corporate servers? And if so, at which point should we consider the beginning of such distribution: since 1994 (i.e., from the period when Blizzard registered its trademarks, and the plaintiffs stopped using their trademark "BLIZZARD RECORDS") or has it been since 2002 (i.e., since Blizzard filed an application with the Office to expand the number of classes for which Blizzard trademarks will be applied, and, as is obvious, after the plaintiffs resumed using the BLIZZARD RECORDS trademark)?
3. Is there a violation of the plaintiffs' rights caused by Blizzard's aforementioned activities of distributing their soundtracks separately from their games?

Resolving the issue of the fact of termination of use of the trademark “BLIZZARD RECORDS” by the plaintiffs were significant in the case, since according to the US law (see the so-called Lanham Act), failure to use a trademark for three consecutive years without the purpose of its subsequent use in the future creates a presumption of refusal to use the trademark. If the person or entity who owns such a trademark does not prove the invalidity of the presumption, then he loses the right to it.

During the trial, the court concluded that the plaintiffs' use of the BLIZZARD RECORDS trademark was discontinued in 1987 due to the termination of the "Zilion" group's promotion, and resumed only in August 1999, when the plaintiffs launched the website blizzardrecords.com. At the same time, the court examined the facts of the plaintiffs' activities and the evidence presented by them in relation to working with the "Chillin’ Sun" group and their promotion, but concluded that in the course of such cooperation with "Chillin’ Sun" the plaintiffs did not use their trademark after all.

It should be noted that the plaintiffs fundamentally had serious problems with the evidentiary base throughout the entire trial: the CDs of the groups they promoted were not branded with their trademark, the label was not known to the public throughout almost the entire history of its existence, the plaintiffs had no even corporate documentation containing the company’s branding. Here is one example from the case: during the trial it turned out that in 1985 (even before cooperating with the plaintiffs) "Zilion" entered into a recording and promotion agreement with another label "Axe Killer Records", therefore it was established that the public associated the "Zillion" promotion with Axe Killer Records, and not with Blizzard Records.

As a result, in relation to Blizzard, the court ruled that in 1994 Blizzard did not receive legal protection for its trademarks in relation to such a registration class as music, but received only those classes that it claimed when registering its trademarks. Thus, the plaintiffs obtained the rights to the music class in relation to the trademarks previously Blizzard.

However, despite the above, the court concluded that Blizzard's use of the BLIZZARD trademark does not constitute a violation of the plaintiffs' rights with respect to their own BLIZZARD RECORDS trademark. Moreover, the use of their own trademarks by the parties to the case does not lead to misleading consumers of the products of both participants, since the consumers of Blizzard products are gamers, i.e. people who are well aware of the manufacturers of computer games and the music they produce for them. Due to their awareness, misleading them with the products of the parties to this lawsuit is not possible in reality.

v. MDY Industries, LLC

In 2004, Blizzard created their iconic game "World of Warcraft". And soon after that, the Arizona company MDY Industries created a game bot "Glider" for this game, which allows users to complete the initial levels of the game in a fairly short time, while under normal game conditions it would take users several weeks to complete it. Sales of the bot began in 2005, and by the time the lawsuit was filed against MDY, they have already sold more than 100.000 copies of their bot.

In 2006, Blizzard filed a claim with MDY that their activities violate the company's rights, and if it does not stop it, Blizzard will go to court to protect its rights. MDY rejected the game maker’s claims and decided to obtain a court ruling that the sale of Glider does not violate any Blizzard rights, and the use of this bot expands the gaming experience for users. MDY positioned itself as an innovator, and considered Blizzard's actions towards them to be unjustified.

In response, Blizzard filed a lawsuit for the existence of a number of violations committed by the actions of MDY: in particular, copyright infringement, violations of the terms of the contract, unjustified enrichment, trademark infringement were indicated.

Based on the results of consideration of all materials submitted by the parties, the court ruled in favor of Blizzard, recognizing MDY Industries as violating the plaintiff's rights. In particular, the court determined that users of the bot were not entitled to use it, because according to the provisions of the End-User License Agreement for the game World of Warcraft (EULA WoW), users were prohibited from using bots or other third-party software that modifies the game world WoW. Since users violated the terms of the license agreements between them and Blizzard in this way due to the use of MDY software, MDY was found responsible for such violation of contractual relations. In addition, the provisions of the DMCA were violated, because the bot bypassed the "Warden" program designed to protect the game server from unauthorized use.

MDY appealed the court's decision to the Court of Appeal, in which in 2010 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that MDY was not recognized as responsible for copyright violations of the plaintiff, but MDY did violate the provisions of the DMCA, using technologies to circumvent protective measures by "Warden".

This decision was also quite significant both for the industry and for judicial practice, because it addressed rather controversial issues regarding the responsibility of the manufacturer of third-party software in relation to the copyright of the software manufacturer, as well as its contractual relationship with its users, who simultaneously use both the original software and third-party software created to interact with the original software.

v. Scapegaming, LLC

In October 2009, Blizzard decided to sue Alison Rees, the owner of the Scapegaming game project, and five persons whose identity Blizzard had not established by the time they filed the lawsuit (but who, according to the plaintiff, were related to Scapegaming activities).

Scapegaming, previously available at scapegaming.com, was a private game project created for commercial purposes and allowed its users to play a modified version of the World of Warcraft game on one of its five servers. This project was not under any management or control from Blizzard, and for access to it, players paid (between $1 and $300) directly to Scapegaming, not Blizzard.

Blizzard claimed in its lawsuit that the defendants carried out their activities, fully aware that they were violating Blizzard's rights in this way. Blizzard counted the actions of Scapegaming:

1. violating the provisions of EULA WoW and ToU WoW,
2. violating Blizzard's copyrights to its own game software, which was subjected by the defendants to unlawful modification and reverse engineering (the results of which, in particular, made it possible to roll back to previous versions of the game to bypass the protective mechanisms embedded by Blizzard in new versions of the client game software), as well as due to the fact that the servers Scapegaming did not check the running copies of the game for their legality,
3. unfair competition against Blizzard,
4. intentionally obstructing the contractual relationship between Blizzard and their users.

According to Blizzard's own estimate, Scapegaming earned approximately 1.5 million US dollars through their portal.

Interestingly, Rees decided not to file an objection to the claim (the co-defendants, whose identities were not identified too), so the court in 2010 ruled in favor of Blizzard as the plaintiff due to the lack of objections to the claim from the defendants, awarding more than $88 million in compensation in favor of Blizzard: $3,052,339 in lost revenue, $85,478,600 in damages and $63,600 in court costs incurred.

Blizzard itself commented on the court's decision as follows: "In addition to last year's decision in the case against MDY Industries, the creator and distributor of cheat software, the decision regarding Scapegaming is another confirmation of the correctness of our efforts to vigorously protect our intellectual property rights."

However, the answer the question of whether Blizzard eventually managed to recover the compensation awarded to it by the court from the defendants could not be found in open sources.

v. Benstar Limited and ANO "RNIC"

This court case was in 2009 in Russia and related to the domain name worldofwarcraft.ru. The defendant, Benstar Limited registered with the domain name registrar ANO "RCIC" (Ru-Center now) worldofwarcraft.ru and it was its administrator. The domain was used for the fan website of the Blizzard game of the same name: various walkthrough guides, descriptions of the game and characters, tasks, etc. were posted on it.

Benstar Limited at one time even received an official letter from Blizzard, according to which the copyright holder recognized this Internet resource as the "official Russian-language site of fans of the game "World of Warcraft".

However, after a certain time, Blizzard decided to get this domain for itself. It is not known for sure whether any claims were sent to Benstar Limited or not regarding the transfer of the domain, however, Blizzard filed a lawsuit with the arbitration court, starting a lawsuit in case No. A40-22747/2009.

As a justification for the violation, it was stated that the plaintiff owns the registered trademark "WARCRAFT" (including for goods of the 09 class of The Nice Classification (NCL) and services of the 41 class of the NCL), and the domain name worldofwarcraft.ru is identical to the plaintiff's trademark in terms of sound, graphic, and semantic features, and also fully includes the name is the trademark of the plaintiff.

Blizzard provided the court with a notarized protocol for securing evidence, according to which on the website worldofwarcraft.ru a user was provided with graphic images with text, including links: "All the news of WOW", "World of Warcraft", "General information", "About World of Warcraft", "Video Guides", "World Map", "History of the World of Warcraft", "Main Forum", "Game Mechanics", "Servers", "Other forums", "Screenshot Contest", "Role-playing game", "Translations", "Site Usage Rules".

The defendant's arguments that they did not use a trademark confusingly similar to the plaintiff's trademarks, as well as that the plaintiff officially recognized the domain worldofwarcraft.ru by sending the defendant a corresponding letter recognizing this resource as the official Russian-language website of fans of the game World of Warcraft. However, they were rejected by the court.

As a result, the court recognized the defendant's actions as violating Blizzard's rights and ordered him to stop using the WARCRAFT trademark in the domain name worldofwarcraft.ru and pay compensation in favor of the plaintiff in the amount of 10,000 rubles.

As for Blizzard’s attempt to recognize the registrar ANO "RNIC" as a defendant, the court denied this to the plaintiff, pointing out that in the .RU domain zone a declarative registration procedure has been established, and ANO “RNIC” is not the administrator of the domain name worldofwarcraft.ru and therefore does not use the plaintiff’s trademark.

v. Bossland GmbH

The German company Bossland GmbH is the creator of gaming bots, including for Blizzard games: Honorbuddy and Gatherbuddy (for World of Warcraft) and Demonbuddy (for Diablo III).

Blizzard, believing that Bossland's actions were a violation of its own rights to game software, filed a lawsuit in 2011. Blizzard determined that Bossland's activities constituted unfair competition and a violation of Blizzard's copyrights and trademark rights for the following reasons:

1. By creating and offering for sale Honorbuddy and GatherBuddy bots, Bossland provokes users of the WoW game to violate the Rules of using the WoW game (WoW EULA);
2. The use of cheat software (bots) significantly affects the game balance, which gives the players who use them unfair advantages over honest players;
3. The use of bots accelerates the onset of the moment of saturation of the gameplay for users, which reduces the subscription period for which the game is usually purchased by users;
4. Bots are programmed in such a way that in their work they bypass the Warden program of the Blizzard defense mechanism for their game;
5. Bossland violates the trademarks of Blizzard "World of Warcraft" and "WOW" by including them in the names of its products;
6. The use of bots violates the plaintiff's copyright because, due to the caching of the software in the computer's RAM, each player using such Bossland software creates a copy of the game that violates Blizzard's copyright. And although such copies are created with the consent of the players themselves, due to their violation of the provisions of the WoW EULA, such consent of the players is seen by Blizzard as illegal actions.

Separately, Blizzard stated in the lawsuit that the use of bots by users of the game is prohibited in accordance with the provisions of Section III of the WoW EULA.

Bossland has not admitted responsibility for any of the violations identified by Blizzard in its lawsuit. So the court had the last word.

The Hamburg District Court in May 2013, having studied all the materials in the case, decided that Bossland is prohibited from distributing game bots related to the World of Warcraft game in Germany. Moreover, in the territory of the European Union, the company is also prohibited from distributing its bots under the names "World of Warcraft Bot" and "WOW Bot". In case of non-execution of the court decision, the company may be fined 250,000 euros, and its CEO may be criminally liable.

After the announcement of the court's decision, Blizzard made a security payment in the amount of 650,000 euros so that the preliminary execution of this court decision would begin immediately after the trial.

It is interesting to note, that after the trial Bossland made appropriate notes on the page of each of its bots that the use of a particular bot is not an offense, and the use of Demonbuddy is not an offense anywhere except in Germany.

v. Ceiling Fan Software, LLC

In December 2011, Blizzard decided to file a lawsuit against Ceiling Fan Software LLC, the creator of another gaming bot for WoW called Pocket Gnome. The owners of the company and unnamed persons were involved in the co-defendants (by analogy with the case against Scapegaming).

The defendants sold the bot at a price of $25 (a one-time payment for the entire period of use), $6.99 (per month for a period of six months), 8.99 (for 1 month). According to Blizzard, the defendants sold copies of their bot for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to Blizzard, the defendants' actions resulted in the following violations:

1. Intentional interference in contractual relations (between Blizzard and users of its game and service);
2. violation of the provisions of the EULA and ToU (because users, according to the provisions of these documents, cannot "use cheats, automated software (bots), hacks and any other unauthorized third-party software created to modify the gameplay"), including with the extraction of commercial profits from games and Blizzard services;
3. unfair competition.

In their lawsuit, Blizzard asked the court to recognize the defendants as having violated its rights, to stop selling Pocket Gnome and other similar software, and to pay monetary compensation to the plaintiff.

Later, the court determined that in addition to "Pocket Gnome", the defendant also sold the "Shadow Bot". Bots allowed the player to earn virtual currency, artifacts, and experience for his character without the direct participation of a player himself. These bots were designed to interact with the plaintiff's game and could not be used for any other computer game.

Ceiling Fan Software not only sold its software, but also distributed instructions for their effective use (including videos, manuals, FAQ, etc.), and also used the plaintiff's trademark "WoW" as a keyword in the Google AdWords advertising network and advertised their software by posting advertising banners.

On their website, in the FAQ section, the respondents even had such a question-answer pair:

Question: Is Pocket Gnome a violation of the Terms of Use of the service?

The answer was "yes". Pocket Gnome is definitely a violation of the Terms of Use of the service. You don't need to have an excellent knowledge of English to fully understand how contrary this is. If you are caught using this bot, you may be blocked. So be careful and don't get caught.

And there was also such a disclaimer on the website of the bot manufacturer:

"We are aware that Blizzard is against the use of bots in their programs and does not allow their use in its TOS/EULA. You may be blocked from using our software due to violations of such provisions of TOS/EULA."

According to Blizzard, the co-defendants provided technical support to users on their own forum and gave advice on how to avoid situations in the game of being detected using a bot.

According to the defendants, their bots were not detectable by the Blizzard gaming system, the bots themselves were not reproduced in the computer's RAM, so they could not be detected by standard means.

Interestingly, the defendants had their own license agreements for the use of bots, in which there was a clause stating that they reserve the right to terminate them with those users who used bots improperly or transferred their bots to other users who did not purchase a license to use them from the defendants. However, the defendants have never terminated license agreements with any of the bot users for such a reason.

The defendants decided to retaliate and filed a counterclaim against Blizzard.

As a result, in September 2013, the court ruled in favor of Blizzard, recognizing the defendants' actions as a violation of Blizzard's rights, since they were unlawful intentional interference in the plaintiff's contractual relations, unfair competition, and violation of contractual obligations.

The court also issued an injunction prohibiting further activities of the defendants in the sale, distribution, and licensing of its bots. Plus, the court awarded compensation in favor of the plaintiff in the amount of 7 million US dollars (interestingly, the defendant did not have enough money to cover its compensation costs, so they even appealed to their own users to help them pay the rest of the compensation).

Currently following the links pocketgno.me and shadowbot.net opens legal.ceilingfansoftware.com with information that the company is prohibited from distributing the created bot, and a link to the court decision.

v. Benjamin Bell and Christopher Spellman

In 2012 in California two gamers (Benjamin Bell and Christopher Spellman) filed a class action lawsuit against Blizzard for the fact that the company did not inform users that additional game elements should be purchased separately after purchasing the game itself in order to ensure the security of information stored in customers' gaming accounts. According to the plaintiffs, such silence on the part of Blizzard was misleading consumers of Blizzard products, and their negligence in protecting confidential user data compromised millions of users (we are talking about events of August 2012). Blizzard should not shift their costs of ensuring the security of user data to the users themselves by selling them such protection measures.

In turn, Blizzard considered the lawsuit pointless, since it was about such company products as an Authenticator – a technical solution to increase the security of user accounts by generating passwords, which can be purchased as a mobile application or device and which is an optional product that allows you to use your account on Battle.net even if his username/password has been compromised. The cost of such a product at the time of filing the claim was only 6.5 US dollars.

The case dragged on for 2 years, and eventually, in May 2014, the parties to the case concluded a confidential settlement agreement between themselves, after which a corresponding application was submitted to the court, on the basis of which the judge of the district court judge dismissed the case.

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v. Worlds, Inc

March 30, 2012 Worlds, Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Blizzard for violating the latter in their games "Call of Duty" and "World of Warcraft" American patents of the plaintiff No 8,082,501, 7,493,558, 7,945,856 and 7,181,690, entitled as "A system and method that allows users to interact in a virtual world".

They cover technologies and methods related to scaling architecture for three-dimensional multiplayer gaming systems that allow users to interact with the environment recreated in game systems using their game character. In fact, such patents give the company a monopoly on the technologies that form the core of most MMO games.

Some sources recognize Worlds, Inc. as a typical patent troll, because the company's activities are limited mainly to licensing its patents and litigation against those who violate patent rights and do not want to license them.

On October 3, 2014, a court hearing was held in which questions regarding the wording in the claims for inventions for which patents were issued were considered. Consideration of the claim on the merits will take place in the foreseeable future.

In the end, Blizzard won this legal fight. Meanwhile, an affiliated company of Activision Publishing Inc has patented a way to stimulate players to purchase in-game items.

v. DOES 1-10

And in this case in 2014, Blizzard is already the plaintiff. The fact is that the defendants created and sold copies of ValiantChaos MapHack and other similar software, which was essentially a cheat code for the Blizzard "StarCraft II" game: it removes the so-called "fog of war" from the game map, allows you to observe the movements of the opponent's units and receive other information that is not available to the user in normal game mode. According to Blizzard, the company suffered significant damage from the actions of the defendants (including reputational damage).

The name of the defendants is indicated exactly this way, since Blizzard itself does not know and has not been able to identify the names of real people involved in the production and sale of such software. As stated in the lawsuit, the creation and use of such software is:

1. violation of the terms of the contracts, namely: the Rules of use of the service Battle.net and StarCraft II EULA,
2. violation of the company's copyright on their game product,
3. the use of measures to circumvent the protection of intellectual property (in the United States, this is a separate type of violation),
4. intentional interference in contractual relations between other users and Blizzard.

In its lawsuit, Blizzard demanded to stop these violations, transfer to the company all copies of materials violating their rights, provide the company with all reports on sales of such software, pay monetary compensation in their favor for violated rights, as well as reimburse all legal costs incurred by it.

Since the identity of the defendants has not been established, and the deadline for providing a response to the claim by the defendants has already expired, in accordance with the procedural law of the state of California, the decision was made in favor of the plaintiff on all points stated in the lawsuit.

The case remains small: it is only necessary to determine the identity of the defendants and bring them to justice in accordance with the court decision.

v. Via Vadis LLC and AC Technologies SA

The most recent of Blizzard's court cases at the moment within the framework of this collection, since the lawsuit against the company was filed 2 months ago in August 2014. The plaintiffs (Via Vadis and AC Technologies) sued the game maker for infringement of their own patents. One of the plaintiffs is known for the fact that at the same time filed a lawsuit not only against Blizzard, but against a number of well-known companies: Amazon, D-Link, Skype, Netgear.

The subject of the lawsuit is the plaintiffs' alleged infringement of patents 7,904,680 and RE40,521 and 8,656,125, all of which are entitled "Data Access and System management, as well as a method of data access and data management for computer systems".

These patents are directly related to distributed data storage technology and peer-to-peer networks (including BitTorrent protocol).

The lawsuit states that Blizzard uses these technologies, which are covered by the plaintiffs' patents, by creating, selling, offering for sale, and distributing their products, including using the BitTorrent protocol. The lawsuit mentions the defendant's products such as games "World of Warcraft", "Starcraft", "Diablo".

The plaintiffs stated that they want to obtain monetary compensation from Blizzard for infringement of the rights to these patents.

Blizzard has not yet spoken publicly about this new lawsuit. But overall, this case seems interesting.

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