An Israel-based venture capital firm hired a local gaming executive from Irvine’s Blizzard Entertainment Inc.
Itzik Ben Bassat, the former vice president of business development for Blizzard, has left to become a partner at Jerusalem Venture Partners.
Jerusalem Venture’s investments are in media, software, semiconductor and communications companies. Its portfolio features a handful of California-based companies among mostly Israeli ones.
Ben Bassat was part of Blizzard’s success with its “World of Warcraft” games played over the Internet.
In the game, players act out roles within “game universes,” facing off with others from their part of the world.
More than 8.5 million people worldwide pay $15 a month to play the game.
The company’s most recent release, “World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade,” has seen record sales after debuting earlier this year.
It sold nearly 2.4 million copies worldwide in its first 24 hours in January, more than any other computer game in history, according to Blizzard.
“When we started out, all we wanted to do was create a great game,” Ben Bassat said in an online interview with London-based Empire magazine. “We knew ‘World of Warcraft’ was good, but I don’t think we ever understood the magnitude of what we had on our hands.”
Ben Bassat is known for having some strong opinions about the future of the gaming industry and what are known by insiders as “MMORPGs,” or massively multiplayer online role-playing games.
“I think that in the near future you won’t see games that don’t have an online component,” he said. “They’re all going to be based around that kind of group play and community.”
Ben Bassat had a big role in marketing “World of Warcraft” into other channels. It now has a card game, a clothing line and a movie in the works.
Acacia Makes Nice With Sage
Newport Beach-based Acacia Research Corp. said it resolved a patent infringement suit with British software maker Sage Group PLC, among others.
The suit was dropped when Acacia entered a license agreement with Sage Software North America, the parent company of Irvine’s Sage Software Inc.
The patents are for technology that allows Web site links to be embedded in other devices, such as CDs and DVDs.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
In January, Acacia filed the suit against Sage and other software makers including McAfee Inc., Autodesk Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. in the Eastern District of Texas.
Acacia filed the suit because that particular district of Texas has a history of moving patent litigation through the system very quickly, said Paul Ryan, president and chief executive.
Acacia partners with tech companies to license their patented technologies to other companies.
It splits sales with the original developers, Ryan said.
The company teams up with outside law firms to enforce the patents,which means pushing litigation to sue for damages, score licensing agreements and get royalties.
“We will analyze the marketplace and see which companies should be using the technology or who’s already using it and not paying royalties,” Ryan said. “If the companies are resistant to take license, we will often times initiate litigation.”
As was the case with Sage, companies would rather ink a licensing deal than go to court.
“It gets people to the bargaining table,” he said.
Acacia, which had about $36 million in revenue last year, controls more than 60 companies’ patent portfolios.
Melissa Buys Software Maker
Rancho Santa Margarita-based Melissa Data Corp., a maker of software for managing and sorting mailing lists, said it bought Peoplesmith Software Inc. last week.
Both Melissa and Scituate, Mass.-based Peoplesmith make software that helps businesses and marketers streamline data for direct mail and people searches, said President Raymond Melissa. Terms of the cash deal weren’t disclosed.
Melissa has been a reseller of some of Peoplesmith’s software for about 15 years, according to Greg Brown, director of marketing.
Brad Stark, who heads up Peoplesmith, was looking to retire. The deal gave him an out, Brown said.
With the deal, Melissa is set to sell and provide support for Peoplesmith’s most popular applications. The company plans to keep the Peoplesmith office in place, Brown said.
Melissa is developing another small part of its business to get into debt collection for businesses and individuals.
The company was started in 1985 by Raymond Melissa, who helped develop computer printers.
In the ’70s, he cofounded Eikon Inc., Irvine’s Printronix Inc. and Trilog Inc., some of the first companies to develop and make personal printers.
Melissa got into mailing list management when Raymond Melissa had the idea to provide bulk mailers with a database of ZIP codes,on floppy disks.
The privately held company pulled in about $15 million in revenue last year and it’s set to have 20% growth in 2007, Brown said.
Melissa has about 100 workers at its 36,000-square-foot office.
