While professionalism has it that I reserve bashing the crap out of things, Erik Estavillo is really asking for it. Let's face it, the guy is on a suing spree from hell. Estavillo, more commonly known as "the banned Resistance player that sued Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo", is now turning his eyes to Blizzard, which is responsible for the evil moneymaker, World of Warcraft. To help make his case, he turns to Depeche Mode's Martin Lee Gore and Winona Ryder - you'll know how that "makes sense" in just a bit.

MMO makers are in a bit of hot water right now. A bunch of them, including heavyweights Blizzard, Sony, and NCSoft, are currently being sued by a New York company for alleged patent infringement. While patent lawsuits have become an almost everyday thing, this one is noteworthy in its scope and that the complainant is PalTalk, who successfully forced Microsoft to settle a US$ 90 million lawsuit over the same patents earlier this year.

Here's another lawsuit to help fill your weekly quota of legal drama. This one was filed by the Entertainment Software Association against the Chicago Transit Authority for its 2009 ordinance that prohibits M and AO-rated video game ads from all its vehicles and facilities, citing that the ordinance is a clear violation of the entertainment software community's constitutional rights.

What do you do when you get banned from Resistance: Fall of Man and, subsequently, the PlayStation Network? Sue Sony, of course! That's the course of action Erik Estavillo of San Jose is pursuing after he was banned from playing R:FoM and other PSN-enabled games while "exercising his First Amendment Rights to Freedom of Speech in the game's public forum."

It's quite an emotional rollercoaster, this week really was. Straight off from the news that the King of Pop has died, we went on to have the usual string of gaming news that rocked our own worlds. With the usual news on lawsuits, layoffs, company shutdowns, convicted murderers over consoles, it was looking to be a sad state of affairs. Good thing we've got our own Neverland to brighten things up a bit. And now we've come to the Fourth of July weekend. Time to kick off those shoes, stretch out, unwind and celebrate. You know we all deserve it. Happy FOJ weekend, everyone!

Another week full of lawsuits. Poor, beleaguered company Midway came under fire once again, and this time it was from a very unlikely direction: the guy behind the Mortal Kombat movies is suing them in order to "protect his IP rights", which is a better way of saying that he wants to keep milking the MK franchise for as long as possible. Square Enix also got served with a class-action lawsuit for "deceiving" Final Fantasy XI patrons regarding fees. Not everything was bad, though. Read all about 'em after the jump in this week's Warrior recap.

Interplay is in trouble, it seems. The company's recent 10-K financial report has revealed that Bethesda is already claiming a breach in the two companies' license agreement for the Fallout MMO.

Apple got served with two separate lawsuits this week by a couple of companies that claim patent infringement on the iPhone, iTunes, the App Store, and even the chips that power the iPhone's camera.

These patent infringement lawsuits really are getting out of hand. This time, Sony, Nintendo and Nokia are being sued over a patent for an invention that will "allow an operator to distribute messages having aural or visual content that is generated by the operator using handheld apparatuses such as mobile telephones."

I'm wondering why they stopped at three companies. They should sue every major electronics company while they're at it.

Looks like Nintendo isn't the only one getting a class-action lawsuit for Christmas. A new lawsuit (with an old tune) is claiming that Microsoft knew about the Xbox 360's disc-scratching problem way before the console was released.

Details in the full article.