Who remembers Zynga publishing the web game FarmVille on Facebook back in the day? The game was discontinued in 2020. Then it was taken over by Take-Two Interactive which is the publisher of GTA games by Rockstar after Microsoft did not buy them. Most recently, Zynga was ordered by a court to pay IBM $45 million for patent infringement.
Zynga is accused of using two IBM patents that were registered in 1980 without permission. Several Zynga games such as FarmVille, Harry Potter: Puzzles and Spells and more are said to use the same patents on Prodigy technology by IBM. Prodigy was a digital subscription service in 1984. Take-Two, which now owns Zynga, stated that they would appeal because each of these patents had expired and also promised that their games would not be affected and that no changes would need to be made.
In the same report, IBM asserted that even though the patent it was allegedly using had expired – while it was still active Zynga deliberately avoided IBM's request to meet and discuss, causing IBM to pursue this suit.