UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
`FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
`MARSHALL DIVISION
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`The Honorable Rodney Gilstrap
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`Civil Action No. 2:19-cv-00310-JRG-RSP
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`JURY TRIAL DEMANDED
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`§ § § § § § § § § §
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`GREE, INC.,
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`v.
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`SUPERCELL OY,
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`Plaintiff,
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`Defendant.
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`EXPERT REPORT OF STACY FRIEDMAN
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`Patent Owner Gree, Inc.
`Exhibit 2006 - Page 1 of 6
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`game with features relevant” to the ’708 patent and ’832 patent.5 It is my understanding that
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`Supercell is currently seeking the depositions of several of GREE employees, including one
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`inventor of the patents-in-suit, and Andrew Sheppard, the former COO and CEO of GREE’s
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`United States subsidiary. I reserve the right to supplement my report, including as to GREE’s
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`contentions that none of its games have features relevant to the patents-in-suit, based on
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`information learned in those depositions.
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`D.
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`GENERAL STATE OF THE PRIOR ART RELATING TO THE ’708 AND
`’832 PATENTS
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`1.
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`Management and Acquisition of In-Game Items in Video Games has
`Existed Long Before the ’708 and ’832 Patents
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`111. The use of virtual items in video games has been common since the early 1990s,
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`and such games included interfaces for viewing, organizing, and acquiring items within the
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`game. For example, in a March 11, 2009 blog post “What is a Role Playing Game?” on the
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`website Gamasutra,6 Robert Corrina noted that “Inventory Management” as part of role playing
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`games (RPGs), “is quite old, dating back to pen and paper character sheets.” Many early RPGs
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`involved a medieval fantasy setting where the character took on the role of an adventurer with
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`combat and sometimes magical skills, and where a common gameplay loop involved exploring
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`an underground dungeon, killing monsters and finding loot, and then returning to a nearby
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`village to sell the loot to an in-game shopowner for gold, and finally upgrading the adventurer’s
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`weaponry or armor so they could tackle dungeons with more dangerous monsters. There were
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`5 Id.
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`6 Available at
`https://web.archive.org/web/20120511225246/https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertCorrina/
`20090311/83491/What_is_a_Role_Playing_Game.php
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`Patent Owner Gree, Inc.
`Exhibit 2006 - Page 2 of 6
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`4.
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`Provision of Random Items Has Been Used to Increase Player
`Engagement and Gameplay Variety
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`132.
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`In line with the concept of providing items of different rarity values, discussed
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`above, many games implement ways from players to acquire items in a random or chance-based
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`way, in order to increase player engagement and gameplay variety. Many games contained
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`mechanisms in which a player is presented a random assortment of items (which may be based
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`upon some player attribute) from which they could select one or more items. For example, in
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`Borderlands, when a player accesses a vending machine, the game’s equivalent of a shop, they
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`are presented with a “random, level-based stock of munitions” from which they could purchase
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`for use within the game. See “Vending Machine”, Borderlands Wiki, 13:39, February 25, 2012
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`Revision.17
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`133.
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`In fact, the concept of providing the player of a game a random set of items from
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`a known pool from which they could select far predates video games themselves. For example,
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`in the board game Scrabble, first published in the 1940s, players would begin the game by
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`drawing seven random letter tiles from a bag of letter tiles. See, e.g., M.J. Stephey, “A Brief
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`History of Scrabble,” TIME, Dec. 7, 2008.18 In a standard Scrabble game, there would be one
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`hundred available letter tiles at the start of each game, each having a number indicating a point
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`value of the letter, where more common letters were worth less points, and rarer letters worth
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`more points. See, e.g., “Game Rules”, World English-Language Scrabble Players’ Association
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`(WESPA), Version 2.0, 17 November 201019; “Scrabble/Rules,” Wikibooks.20 The board itself
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`17 Available at https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Vending_machine?oldid=222424
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`18 Available at http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1867007,00.html
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`19 Available at https://www.wespa.org/rules/RulesV2.pdf
`20 Available at
`https://web.archive.org/web/20111228192222/https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Scrabble/Rules
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`Patent Owner Gree, Inc.
`Exhibit 2006 - Page 3 of 6
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`also indicated how many of each letter were present in the total bag of tiles. See Scrabble
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`Dating, Donald Sauter21 (showing an image from a 1948 edition of Scrabble, reproduced below,
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`in which letter distribution is shown on the game board). The player would select one or more of
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`their tiles to be played onto the gameboard.
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`134. While initially a physical board game, Scrabble has been adapted into an
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`electronic video game, allowing for the game to be played on a computer and for players from
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`around the world to play together through the Internet. For example, in 2002, the developer
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`Infogrames Interactive, Inc. published an electronic version of Scrabble called “Scrabble
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`21 Available at http://www.donaldsauter.com/scrabble-dating.htm.
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`Patent Owner Gree, Inc.
`Exhibit 2006 - Page 4 of 6
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`Complete” playable on Windows computers.22 The rules of the game were consistent with those
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`of the traditional physical board game. Other electronic versions of the Scrabble board game
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`were also made by other developers. See, e.g., “Hasbro Family Game Night: Scrabble Xbox
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`Live Gameplay”, IGN, YouTube, available at
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`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE_9UnATots, published June 23, 2011.
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`135. Even earlier, the concept of randomly shuffling a deck of cards and dealing one or
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`more cards from that randomized deck is an archetypical example of random selection of items
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`from a set of items. Card games date back centuries, and the vast majority of card games begin
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`with a shuffling step intended to randomize the cards distributed to each player. In fact, card
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`shuffling is often taught in computer science courses as an introduction to the basic concepts of
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`shuffling algorithms and the use of random number generators (RNGs). The Fisher-Yates
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`shuffle, a well-known algorithm for shuffling a list of items using an RNG, was first described in
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`1938 and was published in D.E. Knuth’s seminal computer science text “The Art of Computer
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`Programming (3rd ed.)” no later than 1997. A POSITA would have learned these concepts
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`during college. Further, when a standard deck of cards is shuffled without first excluding the
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`jokers – a setup used in many different games, including poker games – a POSITA would
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`understand that some of the cards (jokers, with two per deck) have a different frequency (i.e., are
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`rarer) than the other cards (aces through kings, with four each per deck). Further, the 78-card
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`deck used in the French game “Tarot” dates back before the 19th century and has an unequal
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`22 See “Scrabble Complete PC Manual”, available at
`ftp://ftp.atari.com/manuals/pc/scrabble_complete/manual.pdf; see also Scrabble Complete (PC
`CD-ROM), Infogrames,
`https://web.archive.org/web/20021207111133/http://www.us.infogrames.com/games/scrabble_c
`omplete_pc_family/; “Amazon.com: Scrabble Complete: Video Games”, Amazon.com,
`https://web.archive.org/web/20111207001520/https://www.amazon.com/Scrabble-Complete-
`PC/dp/B00006910J (showing the Scrabble Complete game on sale prior to 2012).
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`Patent Owner Gree, Inc.
`Exhibit 2006 - Page 5 of 6
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`Executed in Lake Oswego, OR on this 2nd day of November, 2020.
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`______________________________
`Stacy Friedman
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`213
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`Patent Owner Gree, Inc.
`Exhibit 2006 - Page 6 of 6
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