In a complaint, filed at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, video game developers Infernal Technologies and Terminal Reality accused Microsoft of infringing its patents for in-game lighting and shadows with various game engines.
A game engine is a software development environment that allows developers to create video games. Game engines have a variety of functions, including a rendering engine, which allows developers to perform deferred rendering, deferred shading and deferred lighting, all of which affect the visual aspect of a scene in a video game.
Microsoft allegedly used the engines in a number of its video games, including Gears of War 4, Forza and Halo 5.
According to the lawsuit, Infernal Technologies and Terminal Reality had entered into agreements with Microsoft to develop games for the Windows operating system. These agreements date back to 1995.
Terminal Reality then continued to to develop video games, such as Kinect Star Wars, as a third-party developer for Microsoft’s Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles.
The complaint said that Microsoft is, or should be, aware of its infringement, as in 2005 Microsoft had applied for a patent addressing the use of pre-computed shadow fields in lighting and shading techniques used in video games, which was later denied in light of Terminal Reality’s prior art.
