Broad Patent Could Have Large Impact on Groupon, Foursquare, & Future Developers
This past week, Hothand, an Orange County firm, filed a lawsuit against Groupon and Yelp, alleging that these companies’ mobile shopping apps infringe its location technology.
The patent abstract describes it as: “A subscription-based system for providing commerce information for one or more mobile devices for one or more merchants.” The breadth of this patent could pose an issue to the emerging location-based marketing industry. Hothand received its patent in April of 2010 and has already used it to sue Foursquare, the location-based social networking service.
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[...] Via Fordham IPLJ [...]
Very cool article. One note, the plaintiff in the case is a company called Mobile Commerce Framework; Hothand is the company that received the patent grant. Check out my article for some information that I found: http://www.ipbrief.net/2011/11/15/groupon-yelp-sued-by-patent-troll/