An attempt to profit from a patent turned into problems.
The story of the confrontation between Valve's lawyers and the patent troll Rothschild, as well as related companies, recently came to an end.
The reason for the proceedings was patent US8856221B2, which describes a "system and method for storing transmittable content in a cloud computing environment." The rights to this patent belong to Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems (RBDS), and back in 2016, Valve received a "perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid, worldwide license" for it and a number of other patents.
However, in 2022, Display Technologies (DT) sued Valve for violating one of the patents covered by this agreement, and in 2023, Valve received another lawsuit from Rothschild's lawyers regarding US8856221B.
Valve filed a counterclaim and the proceedings began, which dragged on for several years.
In February 2026, Valve's victory in court became known:
For example, the court found that Rothschild and DT violated the 2016 license agreement in 2022, and that Rothschild and RBDS had no "sufficient justification for their complete abandonment of their obligations" under that agreement in a 2023 letter to Valve
The desire to profit from Valve turned into not only financial problems for Rothschild (the company secured compensation of $152,000), but also potential new legal troubles.
Rothschild's network of companies was found to have violated Washington state laws aimed at combating patent trolls. This opens the way for new lawsuits.
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