BT alleges that Valve‘s Steam video game distribution platform infringes four patents held by the company.
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British Telecommunications (BT) has filed a lawsuit against Valve over patent infringement for numerous core services of Steam.
Kotaku reports that the lawsuit argues that Steam “offers a broad range of products and services which incorporate technologies invented by BT” that include “inter alia, Valve’s Steam Library, Valve’s Steam Chat, Valve’s Steam Messaging, and Valve’s Steam Broadcasting”. BT says that it notified Valve of the alleged infringements “on multiple occasions”, but that “Valve has failed to respond to BT’s correspondence”.
“BT brings this action to recover the just compensation it is owed for Valve’s past infringement, and to prevent Valve from continuing to benefit from the patented inventions in the future without authorization or compensation to BT”.
This is hot on the heels of Valve being sued for promoting illegal gambling in its games.
The suit has been filed against Valve in DE, a place that tends to favor patent holders.
“Valve owns the league, sells the casino chips, and receives a piece of the casino’s income stream through foreign websites in order to maintain the charade that Valve is not promoting and profiting from online gambling, like a modern-day Captain Renault from Casablanca”, the suit alleges.
There are four BT patents involved. The user requests content directly from the portal instead of requesting content separately from each of the subscription services. Messages are stored as files at a server for retrieval by the intended clients. “Each client transmits requests for messages to the server at automatic and periodic intervals”, the suit adds, referring to the tech used in Steam Chat.
“The user’s status is monitored, and when the user is determined to be logged out of the system, persistent communication mechanisms are available and at least one non-persistent communication mechanism is unavailable”, it explains.
Ars asked BT why Valve alone had been singled out for legal action.
Finally, with the Buckley Patent, BT asserts Valve has infringed on technology allowing “a multi-user display system and method for controlling a communal display that includes at least two independent workstations and an interface server for connection to a data network”. However, that does not explain why DE in particular was chosen. The advantage of these rankings are obvious in that a patentee is more likely to prevail in DE and be awarded more money damages. As only about 10 percent of patent cases actually go to trial, the majority settle.
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BT has turned its legal guns on Valve Software and its Steam gaming service, claiming that the company is infringing the telecoms giant’s intellectual property. BT has, as a result, made a decision to take things to court.
