Internet Media Interactive Corporation v. Journal Register Company

With the cases filed so far this month, inventor-controlled Internet Media Interactive Corp. (IMIC) has brought the number of defendants hit by this leg of its URL manipulation campaign over 60. Last week, IMIC sued TransUnion (9:19-cv-81282) in the Southern District of Florida, having hit Shutterfly (1:19-cv-08313) earlier in the month in the Southern District of New York, accusing each of infringing the sole patent-in-suit through the use of link shortening, allegedly provided in these two cases by Hootsuite and Sprinklr, respectively, with IMIC citing in its complaints contracts allegedly making each defendant vicariously liable, e.g., “a third-party link shortening service provider’s . . . performance” of certain recited steps of the highlighted claim (claim 11).

Internet Media Interactive [NPE] filed four separate suits against E.W. Scripps Company, Journal Register Company, Philadelphia Media Network, and Times Publishing Company, alleging that the defendants’ job search systems available through their websites and their classified ads including unique IDs, infringe a patent related to a system for accessing preselected addresses or URLs on the Internet.  These are the first four patent infringement suits initiated by Internet Media Interactive.  Eric Gagnon is the named inventor on the patent-in-suit, which he assigned to Internet Media Corporation in February 1999.  Internet Media Corporation transferred the patent to Internet Media Interactive in September 2012.  9/21, District of Delaware, no judge yet assigned, 1:2012cv01192; 1:2012cv01193; 1:2012cv01194; 1:2012cv01195.