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LinkedIn Sued over Online Ads

March 6, 2014

Following its first suit against AOL last month, Priceplay.com sued LinkedIn for alleged infringement of patents related to conducting business transactions over the Internet.  Based on assignment records, Priceplay appears to be controlled by individual inventor Wayne Lin. In the complaint filed against LinkedIn, Priceplay maintains that the professional networking site infringes two patents (8,050,982, 8,494,917) through the use of LinkedInAds, a service Priceplay says enables interactive bidding for ad space by advertisers. The two patents-in-suit are continuations of Lin’s earlier 6,978,253 patent. In 2007 Acacia Research subsidiary Performance Pricing sued AOL, Amazon subsidiary A9, Google, IAC, Microsoft, and Yahoo for alleged infringement of the ’253 patent (2:07cv00432). The majority of defendants exited the case in 2009. A year later, a circuit judge granted a motion for summary judgment of non-infringement filed by remaining defendants AOL and Google. In 2011 Performance Pricing lost a Federal Circuit appeal of that decision. RPX reviewed the Priceplay patents as an open market opportunity in January 2013 (Priceplay-OMA). 02/27, Delaware District Court, 1:14cv00267.


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