B.E. Technology, L.L.C. v. Twitter, Inc. DC

Inventor-controlled B.E. Technology, L.L.C. has filed two new suits in the litigation campaign that it began back in 2012 with a slew of Western District of Tennessee cases against Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble (later acquired by Elliott Capital Advisors), Facebook, Groupon, IAC/InterActive (Match.com), Lenovo (Motorola Mobility), Liberty Media (Pandora), LinkedIn (later acquired by Microsoft), Match Group (People Media), Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, and Spark Networks. The new defendants are familiar: Google (1:20-cv-00622) and Twitter (1:20-cv-00621), each sued in the District of Delaware. At issue are features within the defendants’ respective advertisement products for generating advertisements based on users’ Internet activity. B.E. Technology’s three patents, belonging to the same family with two members previously asserted, broadly relate to generating targeted advertisements based on keywords displayed on a user’s webpage.

B.E. Technology [NPE] filed three separate suits against Groupon, Pandora Media, and Twitter, alleging that the defendants’ method of providing demographically targeted advertising infringes a patent related to providing an automatically upgradeable software application that includes targeted advertising based on demographics and user interaction with the computer.  B.E. Technology filed three prior suits against Amazon Digital Services, Facebook, and LinkedIn on September 7, 2012.  Martin David Hoyle is the named inventor on the patent-in-suit, which he assigned to B.E. Technology in January 2001.  9/10, Western District of Tennessee, no judge yet assigned, 2:2012cv02781; 2:2012cv02782; 2:2012cv02783.