Siliconera went patent-spotting recently and guess what they found - two Namco Bandai patents sharing a similar theme: "Skies of Fury" and "Skies of Hostility." When Namco Bandai and skies are on the same subject line, one would probably remember their flight simulator, Ace Combat, which hasn't been making its presence felt in the gaming scene in a while. Another installment, maybe?

Reports are circulating that Eidos has recently filed a trademark for a sequel to 2007's co-op third-person shooter, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC). Sparse details after the jump.

It was another frenzied week for the Xbox 360 blog, with beat-'em-up fighters and persistent zombies taking the lead in news items. Yep, am talking about Street Fighter IV and Left 4 Dead, parts 1 and 2. On the Industry side of things, Microsoft's been relatively quiet... Oh yeah, I hear they're being sued yet again. This time for patent infringement on the XBL.

Microsoft, as it turns out, is embroiled in a long-drawn battle over the ownership of the patent for their online service Xbox Live. As it turns out, they are being sued by Peter Hochstein and Jeffrey Tenenbaum for  infringing on their patent of a method for "communicating live while playing the same video game in separate locations." Details after the jump.

Fairy stuff is probably the last thing you'll find on a software company's patent application archives, say, like a "magic wand", but that's exactly what we have here today. It appears that Microsoft, through J Allard, its CEO, has filed for a patent on a mysterious "magic wand".

I haven't really kept up with the Front Mission series after the third one, but that may soon change as it looks like Square Enix is planning to bring a new Front Mission game to North America.

I hear money bags a'clinkin. A few days ago, we heard tell of Microsoft being sucked into a patent-infringement lawsuit demanding that they pony up US$ 90 million in royalties. Microsoft has since settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount of money. Clink clink clink.

And it's another case of patents gone wild. Microsoft is the target of this infringement lawsuit, where they're being asked to pay US$ 90 million for using patented technology in the Halo games, as well as both Xbox consoles. The funny part is those patents were only purchased for US$ 200,000.

Details after the link.

Remember when Konami sued Harmonix over Rock Band (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii) for alleged patent infringements last year? Well, Harmonix and owner Viacom is fighting back with a counter-suit filed Wednesday.

Looks like Microsoft is taking a page out of Nintendo's book and making gaming a bit more family-friendly. A new patent from Microsoft suggests that they might introduce a live censoring filter that bleeps out swear words. Yeah, no more swearing, you d- *bleep*.