Shortcuts: Thanksgiving edition

Posted by Dan on November 20, 2008

Today’s shortcuts brought to you by the letter J and the website Patent Arcade.

• THQ v. Activision, which we never actually had time to tell you about since it only popped up a week ago, has settled, with THQ dismissing the case with prejudice.
• Nintendo. Patent infringement. AGAIN. This one is Motiva v. Nintendo, over US Patent No. 7,292,151. It appears to be involving the Wiimote, or the sensor bar based on the claims in the ‘151 patent. For those of you interested in following up on PACER, it’s at Motiva, LLC v. Nintendo Co. Ltd. et al., docket 6:08-cv-429, filed Nov. 10, 2008, in the Eastern District of Texas (Tyler Division).

And last week, the USPTO granted the first trademark ever for an avatar in a virtual world. Ross Dannenberg has more:

Registration number 3,531,683 is for Computer programming services, namely, content creation for virtual worlds and three dimensional platforms. The interesting part, however, is the mark itself (pictured at left), which is an actual avatar in the virtual world of Second Life. The mark was registered on the Principal Register, meaning that the mark inherently has secondary meaning as a source of origin of goods and/or services (i.e., the mark is not generic or descriptive).

This is kind of a big deal. Also, this is my last post before VGXPO, so those of you going, I’ll see you there!

Oh and in other news, my Comment first draft is done! After thinking it over, I’m probably not going to post it here until after it gets edited and published, so hopefully by January it’ll be online. However, if you’re interested in seeing an early copy, let me know through the contact form, and I’ll see what I can do.

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