Worlds Inc (WDDD)

[coolerheadsprevail]

That is great and no reason the judge wont accept the Cert.

One more thing to keep in mind:

ATVI is not actually arguing that the Certificate of Correction is not valid. They are not arguing that the priority date is not 11/13/1995. What they are arguing is a timing issue. A technicality, really. But one that has some teeth in it based upon case law. What ATVI is arguing is that BECAUSE this Certificate of Correction was issued DURING ONGOING LITIGATION THAT RELATES TO SAID PATENTS, that the priority should not be deemed active for this current case.

By way of reference, here are some precedent cases that were dug up by a poster on freeforums:

SOUTHWEST SOFTWARE INC v. HARLEQUIN INCORPORATED ECRM
In this case, the Court ruled that certificates of correction are not in effect for causes of action beginning before the certificate of correction was issued.

E.I. du Pont v. MacDermid Printing
In this case, the Court actually permitted the certificate of correction to be in effect if the correction is due to "minor mistakes". HOWEVER, and this is the point that ATVI is arguing, is that in this DuPont case, the certificate of correction was filed for BEFORE filing the lawsuit -- not after.

RADAR INDUSTRIES, INC. v. CLEVELAND DIE & MANUFACTURING COMPANY
In this case, the Court ruled that "the certificate of correction for which Plaintiff has applied would only have prospective application".


That all being said, no two lawsuits are the same, and each of the cases above had their own unique attributes that may or may not have contributed an unknown degree of influence on how/why the Court ultimately ruled on the applicability of the certificate of correction the way it did. All we can do is to be aware of precedent cases and look at the specific issue and how it was handled on a case-by-case basis.

What the above precedent cases tell us is that there is currently no existing precedent that fits EXACTLY the criteria that exists here: Certificate of Correction issued due to "minor clerical error", but which was requested AFTER a lawsuit over the patent in question was filed. This is really a crapshoot as there are no tea leaves that can be read that can give anyone any idea how this judge will rule.

To say it in its simplest terms, here is the decision tree that lays before us as investors:

(1)
Will the Court accept the Certificate of Correction as applicable and active FOR THIS CASE due to the correction being "minor"?

If "YES", game on.
If "NO", the case likely will be dismissed due to the fact that WDDD would only be able to claim a priority date FOR THIS CASE of 11/13/1996 instead of 11/13/1995 -- and the fact that there is already a public demo of the patents dated May-1995, this will blow WDDD out of the water as it will be easy for ATVI to prove that WDDD was already practicing the patents publicly more than 1 year prior to the effective priority date.

(2)
If "YES" to (1) above, will the Court grant the Certificate of Correction to be active and applied retro-actively?

If "YES", game is really on as this puts us back on track to what shareholders have been envisioning and expecting from the beginning.
If "NO", this shortens the game dramatically as any damages related to periods before the Certificate of Correction was issued on 9/24/13 stand a good chance of no longer be on the table. This will likely change the risk-reward calculus for many investors.