Microsoft accused of 'egregious and wilful' patent infringement
Terminal Reality and Infernal Technologies file lawsuit against tech giant for infringing patent with multiple games
Microsoft has been accused of "egregious and wilful" patent infringement in a lawsuit filed against it by Infernal Technologies and Terminal Reality.
The tech giant is facing a lawsuit for its alleged infringement of Patent 6,362,822 and Patent 7,061,488, relating to graphical lighting and shadowing methods.
Terminal Reality states that, while developing its own projects such as Nocturne, Bloodrayne, and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, it built and reiterated the Infernal Engine which it then licensed out to other studios.
According to the filing, a number of games developed by Microsoft including -- but not limited to -- Halo 5, the Crackdown series, multiple Forza titles, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and Sea of Thieves, infringe on Patents '488 and '822.
Terminal Reality and Infernal Technologies argue that Microsoft is "intimately familiar with the nature and scope" of both Patent '822 and Patent '488, and has been since at least 2005.
This claim is supported by a patent filing put forward by Microsoft that year which was rejected in 2007 based on disclosure of Patent '488 and '822.
There is further legal precedent supporting the case of Terminal Reality and Infernal Technologies.
In 2016 Electronic Arts began an Inter Partes Review, challenging the patentability of all claims in the '822 and '488 Patents in an effort to discredit a lawsuit filed against it by Terminal Reality and Infernal Technologies in 2015. The claims were rejected wholly in October 2017 and EA entered into a formal settlement agreement.