{"id":231988,"date":"2025-05-20T19:19:21","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T18:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=231988"},"modified":"2025-05-20T21:23:51","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T20:23:51","slug":"epic-games-prevails-in-patent-infringement-case-over-travis-scott-ariana-grande-concerts-in-fortnite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/epic-games-prevails-in-patent-infringement-case-over-travis-scott-ariana-grande-concerts-in-fortnite\/","title":{"rendered":"Epic Games prevails in patent infringement case over Travis Scott, Ariana Grande concerts in Fortnite"},"content":{"rendered":"

Video game company Epic Games has successfully defended itself in a trial where it was accused of patent infringement in Fortnite<\/em> concerts by Ariana Grande and Travis Scott.<\/p>\n

In a verdict handed down on Monday (May 19) in a federal court in Seattle, jurors found Epic Games<\/strong> didn\u2019t violate a patent held by Utherverse Gaming LLC<\/strong><\/a>, a company that licenses patents for the creation of virtual environments. A related company, Utherverse Digital<\/a>, operates platforms for virtual events.<\/p>\n

The jury found that neither the Ariana Grande<\/strong> concert nor the Travis Scott<\/strong> concert in Fortnite<\/em> violated Utherverse\u2019s patent.<\/p>\n

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Utherverse had asked the court for 15%<\/strong> of the revenue that Epic Games had made from the two concerts, which, according<\/a> to Law360<\/em>, would have amounted to $32.5 million<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Travis Scott\u2019s virtual rap concert in Fortnite<\/em> in 2020 saw a record turnout of 12.3 million<\/strong> live attendees<\/a>, and Ariana Grande\u2019s show in 2021 is believed to have been on a similar scale. Both Scott<\/a> and Grande<\/a> were estimated to have made around $20 million<\/strong> from the virtual shows.<\/p>\n

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Utherverse sued<\/a> Epic Games in June 2021, alleging that Epic Games had infringed on several of its patents. The company said the patents were for processes designed to solve a problem with very large virtual experiences: Past a certain point, the processing power and bandwidth needed to add more users to the space would grow \u201cexponentially.\u201d<\/p>\n

In January 2022, Epic Games responded with a counterclaim<\/a> that Utherverse\u2019s patents were invalid under US patent law. Over several years of legal back-and-forth, the case was narrowed down to a single patent held by Utherverse.<\/p>\n

Titled \u201cMethod, System and Apparatus of Recording and Playing Back an Experience in a Virtual Worlds System,\u201d the patent describes \u2013 among other things \u2013 a process for \u201creplay[ing] a scene that occurred in a [virtual] environment, such as a concert, a wedding or a lecture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no experience in a virtual environment until the animations were played as part of the [Grande and Scott concerts], and Epic did not record those events or the experiences that took place within them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Epic Games<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Epic, represented by law firm Morrison & Foerster<\/strong>, denied that it had infringed this patent. The company\u2019s key argument was that its virtual concerts aren\u2019t \u201creplays\u201d of something that had happened in a virtual environment, but had been created in advance, before being placed into a virtual environment.<\/p>\n

The Grande and Scott shows \u201cwere not recordings of a prior experience that occurred in a virtual environment and thus are not a \u2018recorded experience file\u2019 as construed by the court,\u201d Epic Games said in a pre-trial briefing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no experience in a virtual environment until the animations were played as part of the [Grande and Scott concerts], and Epic did not record those events or the experiences that took place within them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Epic also argued that the patent was invalid, in part because of the existence of \u201cprior art,\u201d that is, the process described in the patent had been used before the patent was filed. The company cited the game StarCraft II<\/em>, as well as other patent applications, including one by Sony Corp<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Since its launch in 2017, Fortnite<\/em> has seen<\/a> 650 million<\/strong> user registrations and, at last count, had around 60 million<\/strong> daily active users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A jury found that neither the Ariana Grande show nor the Travis Scott concert in ‘Fortnite’ a patent held by Utherverse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":83313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1066,124252,5301,132603,2606,134203],"class_list":["post-231988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ariana-grande","tag-epic-games","tag-fortnite","tag-patent-infringement","tag-travis-scott","tag-utherverse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}