Beneficial Innovations, Inc. v. Advance Publications, Inc. et al CAFC

Google won a suit against Beneficial Innovations after intervening on behalf of customer defendants. In Google’s 2012 complaint, the ad platform provider argued that Beneficial breached the terms of a 2010 settlement agreement when it sued five of Google’s customers in 2011 (2:11cv00229). On January 23, 2014, a jury found in Google’s favor and awarded one dollar in nominal damages. Beneficial Innovations filed two suits against Google in 2007 and 2008. In 2010, Beneficial and Google entered into a settlement agreement that included a license to Google and its “partners” to three patents related to targeted advertising (6,712,702; 6,183,366; 7,496,943). The settlement agreement defined partners to include Google’s customers. Beneficial then went on to file suit in 2011 against 12 defendants, of which five were Google customers: Advance Publications, ALM Media Properties, American Media, Autotrader.com, and Demand Media.  01/14, Eastern District of Texas, 2:11cv00229

Beneficial Innovations [NPE] files suit against Advance Publications, Dell, Amazon, and nine others over two patents related to systems for playing games and displaying advertisements on a network. 4/20, Eastern District of Texas, 2:2011cv00229.