PlayStation Now Cloud-Gaming Infringes Patents Held by 3 ex-3DLabs Inventors, Alleges Complaint

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) infringes four “foundational” patents in cloud-gaming through manufacture, use and sale of the PlayStation Now game-streaming service, and its "hosting" of games on the PlayStation Now server, alleged a complaint (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California. 3DLabs CEO Osman Kent and his "chief architects" at 3DLabs, David Baldwin and Nicholas Murphy, invented the “groundbreaking technology” behind PlayStation Now, and the patents now belong to Intellectual Pixels Ltd. (IPL), a British firm co-owned by the original 3DLabs founders, said the complaint. “Decades before SIE and others started touting cloud gaming as the new frontier, pioneers in the field of graphics processing invented the fundamental technologies for enabling cloud gaming and streaming graphics applications,” it said. Though “never commercialized” at 3DLabs, “the concept of cloud gaming and streaming other graphics applications from a server or the cloud to a client device was considered one of the most valuable inventions” the firm developed, it said. 3DLabs rebranded itself ZiiLabs in 2009 and still services the “legacy” PC graphics cards it helped pioneer in the 1990s. SIE didn’t comment Friday.