Patent Troll Goes After Fresh Meat

Mobile Commerce Framework goes after Groupon and Yelp for patent infringement.

Image: Dmitri Mikitenko/Shutterstock

Congratulations Groupon on your successful IPO! Now you’re being sued.

Little known “patent troll” Mobile Commerce Framework, which has already filed a similar patent infringement suit against Foursquare, now turns its attention to Groupon and Yelp, according to a report in Tech Crunch.

Patent number 7693752 was filed on May 26, 2005—three years before Groupon existed, four years before foursquare came to life, and one year after Yelp launched. The patent, however, wasn’t awarded until April 6, 2010, well after the launch of each organization.

The patent is for, “a subscription-based system for providing commerce information for one or more mobile devices for one or more merchants.” Wording that at the time may have seemed novel enough, but has come to read as more of a patent on the future of capitalism.

According to TechCrunch's account, the MCF believes that the other companies “infringe its patent by creating and distributing mobile apps that can be used by people to obtain information and offers from merchants by searching, based on their physical location and merchant type. ”

Little is known about Mobile Commerce Framework. In fact, other than its website including a circa 1991 graphic of a cell-phone and what seems to be a series of pathways connecting the phone to “retailer applications,” an online search of the company reveals almost exclusively a collection of lawsuit reports and one academic article published in May of 2010, “An Enterprise Architecture Framework for Mobile Commerce.”

Mobile Commerce Framework has not yet responded to our request for comment.

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