Inventor-controlled DiStefano Patent Trust III, LLC (DPT III) has added a case against Microsoft (LinkedIn) (1:17-cv-01798) to the campaign that it began this past March with separate suits filed against Foursquare Labs, TripAdvisor, and Yelp. Each of those cases saw dismissals within months and before any defendant answered, or otherwise responded to the complaint against it. In its new case, DPT III asserts a single patent, broadly concerning the use of reciprocal links on separate web pages, from the same family as the two patents asserted against the prior defendants. The NPE targets LinkedIn’s system of “reciprocal linking arrangements”—i.e., connecting users’ pages through invitation.
