Activision loses $23.4m patent infringement case against Acceleration Bay

Recently, a US Jury has ruled that Activision has to pay Acceleration Bay $23.4m for infringement of some of their patents.

Activision is a large video game publisher based in California. The cases began in 2015 and centered on some of Acceleration Bay's patents relating to “simultaneous sharing of information” between multiple “widely distributed” computers. Activision tried to argue that they did not infringe on Acceleration Bay's patents as their technologies work in different ways. However, the jurors did not see it this way. 

After a week long trial, Activision now owes Acceleration Bay $5.4m for infringement involving two Call of Duty games and $18m for the use of the patents in World of Warcraft. Activision is arguing that the damages should not be more than $300,000 and are seeking to appeal the decision.

Acceleration Bay also concurrently filed similar patent infringement suits against EA, Take-Two, and Amazon Web Services. So far only EA have beaten Acceleration Bay.