Priceline founder targets Apple's iPad in second patent lawsuit

Posted:
in iPad edited January 2014
Walker Digital, founder of travel site Priceline.com, has filed its second patent infringement suit against Apple, taking aim at the iPad and a digital media application available for download on its App Store.



Filed last week, the complaint from Walker Digital accuses Apple of patent infringement alongside the Walt Disney Company, The Weather Channel, The Nielsen Company, Digimarc Corporation, and TV Aura Mobile. Walker Digital hopes to convince a court that the companies are in violation of U.S. Patent No. 6,263,505.



Walker Digital is the owner of the patent entitled "System and Method for Supplying Supplemental Information for Video Programs," granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office in July 2001. It describes a system that synchronizes additional media, such as separate audio or video, with a program that is being played either live or a recording that is being replayed.



Apple is named in the lawsuit not because of any applications it has made. Rather, the lawsuit names software that is available on Apple's App Store, including "From the Edge" and "ABC's Grey's Anatomy Sync," which can be run on the iPad.



Walker Digital's lawsuit says those applications have the ability "to receive a request from a viewer for supplemental information related to a video program (such as photos, behind the scenes video and/or character information), receive synchronization information relating to the video program, process the request for supplemental information, and transmit the synchronized supplemental information using the synchronization information."



The complaint, filed in a U.S. District Court in Delaware, alleges that an iPad with either of those applications installed on it is in violation of the '505 patent. Walker Digital has claimed to have suffered "severe and irreparable harm," and seeks an injunction against the defendants, along with appropriate damages.







The second lawsuit from Walker Digital against Apple has a list of defendants that is much more focused than the first complaint filed in court earlier this month. That lawsuit, which also alleges patent infringement, included Apple among more than 100 major technology companies, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook.



Walker Digital was founded in 1994, and is best known for the creation of Priceline.com in 1998. The travel service went public in 1999 and the next year Jay S. Walker, founder of Walker Digital, left Priceline to focus on new ventures.



The plaintiff said that its inventions are covered by more than 450 issued and pending U.S. and foreign patents. In the lawsuit, Walker Digital alleges that its '505 patent "represents breakthrough technology in the field of consumer electronics."

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 18
    rbonnerrbonner Posts: 635member
    When I was viewing this article, all of the ads were for price line, kinda funny.
  • Reply 2 of 18
    banchobancho Posts: 1,517member
    The Priceline LIT-I-GAT-OR!



    [ as William Shatner comes crashing through the wall]
  • Reply 3 of 18
    zindakozindako Posts: 468member
    I find it strange how generic this so called patent is, and the fact there is no real product or physical invention to go along with this patented idea.
  • Reply 4 of 18
    gustavgustav Posts: 827member
    Apple's QuickTime had this capability in the 1990s.
  • Reply 5 of 18
    wtbardwtbard Posts: 42member
    The patent was granted in July 2001, not July 2011.
  • Reply 6 of 18
    stevetimstevetim Posts: 482member
    Denny craine can beat steve jobs any day.

  • Reply 7 of 18
    bdkennedy1bdkennedy1 Posts: 1,459member
    It will get tossed. It's the equivalent of squatting on a domain name you never use.
  • Reply 8 of 18
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Prediction: Walker settles out of court for a 20% off Häagen-Dazs coupon and a free bottle of hotel shampoo/conditioner.
  • Reply 9 of 18
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    Everybody wants a piece of that $66,000,000,000.00 don't they.
  • Reply 10 of 18
    robin huberrobin huber Posts: 3,949member
    And this from a guy whose original come-on for Priceline was "you set your own price" and get it. The truth was you can set whatever ridiculously low price you want, but you'll settle for whatever the seller is willing to give you.
  • Reply 11 of 18
    enjournienjourni Posts: 254member
    ROFL. So now apple's a fault for some application on their store, that they had nothing to do with in making? Did these people ever object when the infringing apps came out, or did they wait a while to let apple make some money from them before suing?



    "Let's sue apple, they have deeper pockets then XYZ minor app developer."
  • Reply 12 of 18
    wigginwiggin Posts: 2,265member
    And if I'm using my iPad while sitting in my chair, are they going to sue LayZBoy, too? After all they are just as guilty of facilitating my use of the supposedly infringing application as Apple is.
  • Reply 13 of 18
    jd_in_sbjd_in_sb Posts: 1,600member
    Just another tech piglet hungry for the Apple cash teet.
  • Reply 14 of 18
    Walker Digital was founded in 1994, and is best known for the creation of Priceline.com in 1998. The travel service went public in 1999 and the next year Jay S. Walker, founder of Walker Digital, left Priceline to focus on being a patent troll.
  • Reply 15 of 18
    starnycstarnyc Posts: 24member
    we spent the whole 90's working on interactive TV in Flash and Quicktime that had these exact capabilities built into the media wrapper and creation tools.



    This patent filed in 2001 is BS and should not have been granted, considering it could essentially have been gleaned from Quicktime or Flash Scripting that already existed.



    Walker should be called for a flagrant foul, pay through the nose and get publicly kicked in the balls for this ludicrous suit and frivolous, derivative patent.
  • Reply 16 of 18
    mknoppmknopp Posts: 257member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by zindako View Post


    I find it strange how generic this so called patent is, and the fact there is no real product or physical invention to go along with this patented idea.



    You just described EVERY software patent. This is the reason that software should not be patentable. The fact that the US judicial system decided that they knew better than the founding fathers and the industry leaders at the time (including, interestingly enough, Bill Gates) when they decided to grant software patentability just shows how out of touch with the consequences of their actions the US judicial system is at times.
  • Reply 17 of 18
    Latest try with them cheated me. They showed me four Priceline hotels on their offer site.



    I decided that I could not go wrong on any of these. I bid 60 percent off. Low and behold some twenty five star offerings appeared.



    The one I won was a Marriott. Since I am a member of Marriott I could have gotten the same room lower than my bid price.



    looks like collusion to me. Dropped out of both Priceline and Marriott rewards. Watch the Priceline freight train stock growth come off the tracks as one by one the clients drop away.



    Jerk companies.
  • Reply 18 of 18
    zoetmbzoetmb Posts: 2,654member
    While I haven't read the entire patent, this sounds like so much meanginless technobabble. And synchronization of sound and picture have been around since the advent of film sound in 1928.



    Once again, we seem to have a patent based on a general idea instead of a specific methodology or implementation.



    And yet, everyone else seems to copy Apple's products, form factors and UI without problem.



    In another news item, Amazon, of all companies, is supporting the position that Apple should not be able to trademark "App Store". Amazon...the company who actually got a patent for "one-click ordering" which is nothing more than recognizing a user by user name and password and referring to information about that user stored in a relational database - a database that has been around far longer than Amazon.
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