Sony, EA, Disney and Ubisoft Are Charged with Copyright Infringements

Ever since the broadband Internet became a household appliance, games have begun to rely more and more on it. So much so that some have even lost the single-player element altogether and now rely on the online community the titles scored to keep themselves alive. Most online games encourage in one way or another a strong communication between players, and, if written chat is more than enough for friendly chitchat or in-game strategies for a turn-based title, fast paced, real-time video games require some more advanced features.

The one thing that was regarded as being the most efficient solution was the one most obvious. The best way players can communicate with the others is by literally talking to one another. As such, voice chat has become part of more and more games, with some introducing even a more advanced voice-recognition engine. But it seems that, somewhere along the twisted paths of shared knowledge and copyrights, someone forgot that this wasn't something that you could use at your own discretion.

A patent for "optical disks with speech recognition templates used to access information" was awarded by the US Patent and Trademark Office in 1997 to Bareis. The company took personal offense in the fact that many games had, in a certain degree, incorporated its technology without first asking for permission. As such, like pretty much any disagreement that takes place in America, a lawsuit was born. Electronic Arts, Sony, Ubisoft, and Disney have all been accused of infringing copyrights in one or more of their games.

The titles targeted by Bareis are EA's NASCAR and Sony's SOCOM series, Disney Interactive Studios' Phonics Quest and an entire plethora of games from Ubisoft. These include several Tom Clancy titles, such as Rainbow Six: Lockdown, Rainbow Six 3, Rainbow Six Vegas, Ghost Recon 2, and EndWar. The Plano, Texas-based Bareis Technologies company wants the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to settle the matter, seeking damage from the game developers in the form of royalties, interest on these royalties, attorney fees and anything else the court sees fit to give it.