Activision to pay $23.4m for patent infringement
Acceleration Bay's legal battle with the Call of Duty maker ends after eight years
A jury has ruled that Activision Blizzard will pay tech incubator Acceleration Bay $23.4 million for patent infringement.
As reported by Law.com, the May 3 ruling comes after the incubator began its legal action back in 2015.
The case filed in the US District Court for the District of Delaware claims that patents for networking and broadcasting were used in Activision's multiplayer title.
The publisher owes Acceleration Bay $18 million in copyright infringement for World of Warcraft and $5.4 million for two Call of Duty titles.
Jurors were asked two questions to reach a verdict, among them was "Did Acceleration Bay prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Activision's products as identified below infringe one or more claims of the following asserted patents?"
In response to the question, the jury was then asked after verdict to "reasonably compensate Acceleration Bay for Activision's infringement of Acceleration Bay's asserted patents."
While the case against Activision Blizzard has been decided in favor of the tech incubator, it has also filed similar patent infringement suits against EA (EA went on to beat the claims in 2022), Take-Two, and Amazon Web Services.
In response to the ruling, Activision Blizzard said, "While we are disappointed, we believe there is a strong basis for appeal. We have never used the patented technologies at issue in our games.