A Boston court delivered a big blow Thursday to a company that claims to own “virtual worlds,” rejecting claims that game maker Activision(S atvi) should pay for using talking avatars in popular online titles like World of Warcraft.

In a ruling, U.S. District Judge Denise Casper wrote that patents belonging to Worlds Inc. appear invalid because the inventions they describe already appeared in public before the patents were filed.

The patents themselves, including US Patent 7,181,690, claim “a method for enabling a first user to interact with other users in a virtual space,” and are based on an earlier filing from 1996 that depicts the “invention” in action. Here’s a drawing from the patent:

The patents in question belong to an obscure company called Worlds Inc. that raised eyebrows in 2009 when it announced that it owned the rights to virtual worlds and that it would sue the entire gaming industry