Wildcat Intellectual Property Holdings, LLC v. 4Kids Entertainment, Inc. et al
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas
Case No. 11-cv-305, Filed July 1, 2011

Wildcat, a Plano, TX based intellectual property holdings company has filed suit in court against a slew of game developers, including Sony, EA, Konami, Nintendo and Zynga, for alleged infringement of a patent for electronic trading cards. U.S. Patent No. 6,200,216 (the ‘216 patent), issued March 13, 2001, outlines a “system for the application of a trading card metaphor to a dissociated computer program… taking the traditional trading card metaphor and uniquely updating and enhancing it for application in consumer digital media.” The patent is not only an electronic card making application, but “the card format supports both scarcity and authenticity, which are essential to card collecting and trading, within a dissociated computer code segment.”

Wildcat’s complaint alleges that a number of video games and online trading card games infringe the ‘216 patent. These include EA’s Battleforge, Konami’s Marvel trading card game, Nintendo’s Pokemon trading card game, and Zynga’s Warstorm. The complaint alleges that the defendants not only directly infringe the patent, but that they knowingly induced infringement by making these games available to their customers online, and/or by importing these games to the United States and making them available here. Wildcat requests relief in the form of a permanent injunction, damages, costs, expenses, and attorney’s fees. We’ll keep an eye on this case and keep you updated.

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