Worlds.com has filed a lawsuit against South Korean game publisher NCSoft.  NCSoft is most famous for games such as City of Heroes, Lineage, Aion: Tower of Eternity and Guild Wars.  The lawsuit was filed at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division.  The patent in question is 7,181,690: System and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space.  The patent was filed by Dave Leahy, Judith Challinger, B. Thomas Adler, and S.J. Ardron.  Below is an image from the filed patent.

Attorney Stephen Roth of Lerner David, Westfield, N.J. stated that he could not discuss what other companies that Worlds.com plans to bring into the lawsuit.  But he did mention that there are “certainly other companies that could come within the scope of our patent claims” according to Mediapost.com.  The patent allows Worlds.com to recover 6 years damages, but is only allowed to collect damages from the date the patent was issued.

Others that could be affected by this lawsuit includes Linden Lab for Second Life and Microsoft for their Xbox avatar system.

[via Mediapost]

Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, and Tim Draper are participating in a NCsoft Operation Immortality experiment to send DNA into outer space.

Kevin Rose is the founder and creator of Digg. Robert Scoble is a tech blogger, social media advocate, and a videographer at FastCompany.TV. Tim Draper is the founder of venture capital company, Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Since this news had Kevin Rose’s name in it, I submitted it to Digg and it became popular within 14 hours. Digg it up if you like the news. Richard Garriot, a game designer is also sending his DNA.

All of these individuals are travelling to the International Space Station on October 12 to send their DNA. Operation Immortality is sending a digital time capsule of the human race on the ISS with DNA samples of musicians, athletes, and some of Silicon Valley’s brightest.

“It is exciting to have Kevin, Tim and Robert join this project and be a part of preserving their accomplishments which have changed our world,” stated Garriott. “These three individuals are some of the most creative and innovative minds in Silicon Valley and we are honored to include them as part of our snapshot of humanity in the 21^st Century.”

Here is the press release of the news.