FarmVille creator Zynga sued by Walker Digital over gaming patent

Well, what do you know, it's almost noon. Time for another Zynga lawsuit, isn't it? Walker Digital has sued Zynga and Activision Blizzard for patent infringement, claiming the three companies made use of U.S. patent no. 6, 425,828, which belongs to Walker Digital, according to TechCrunch. Issued on July 30, 2002, the patent is titled, "Database driven online distributed tournament system." More specifically, Walker Digital's 20-page patent boils down to:

    A method and a system for a distributed electronic tournament system in which many remotely located players participate in a tournament through input/output devices connected to a central controller which manages the tournament. The method includes the steps of (a) uniquely identifying a player communicating with the central controller via an associated input/output device...


While there are three more steps to how the patent operates involving prize winnings and database management, what's most interesting is the first. Because of how widely terms like that could interpreted, games like Mafia Wars, World of Warcraft and the Call of Duty series are claimed by Walker Digital to infringe on the patent, Tech Crunch reports.

With the amount of times the company has faced legal disputes in 2010, it is almost unsurprising that the social gaming juggernaut didn't even make it through the first month of 2011 without a lawsuit being presented to them. Oh, the joys of running multi-billion dollar companies. We've contacted Zynga for comment, so stay tuned.

Watch your back, Nintendo: GREE doesn't want just a piece of your pie

The Japan-based mobile social games company wants all of it. That's essentially what the company's founder and CEO, Yoshikazu Tanaka, told TechCrunch during its Disrupt event in Tokyo recently. The GREE chief told TechCrunch that most of the company's revenue comes from its Japanese audience, but that it hopes to follow Nintendo's example in creating a massive global audience.

But Tanaka isn't happy with just following Nintendo, he looks to displace the veteran games maker. He told the news outlet that he wouldn't surprised to see GREE's revenue in the West jump to four to five times of what it is in Asian within the next five years. "We definitely feel positive, and our goal is to make sure our brand is just as successful, if not better than Nintendo."

Nintendo is infamous for its unwillingness to enter the mobile games market through iOS or Android. While the company does plan to release an iOS version of its eShop (the downloadable games store on the 3DS), it simply refuses to create games for mobile phones. This is despite numerous studies suggesting otherwise and even investors clamoring for Nintendo games on iPhone.

Nintendo did, however, manage to sell more 3DS consoles in its first eight months on the market than the original DS system sold in one year. Perhaps there's still interest in a handheld device dedicated to gaming, but you could also chalk these immense sales up to the devices' price cut over the summer and a terribly strong Black Friday. Regardless, the mobile gaming world is after Nintendo, which leaves us wondering whether its stern strategy can withstand the onslaught.