Plaintiff CRFD Research sues Hulu, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, etc. in the Dist. of Delaware on Friday, alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,191,233 (“System for Automated, Mid-Session, User-Directed, Device-to-Device Session Transfer System”) filed Sept. 7, 2001, and issued in 2007. According to the complaints, “[t]he inventions of the ’233 Patent are applicable to, among other things, a transfer of an on-going software session from one device to another device.” Regarding Hulu, Plaintiff purports that the following actions are indicative of infringement: “a user can ‘[m]igrate [his or her] viewing experience seamlessly across devices: start watching on [his or her] phone, [and] continue watching on [his or her] TV.’”
With regard to Amazon, the complaint asserts additional patent no. 7,574,486 (“Web Page Content Translator”) filed Nov. 8, 2000, and issued in 2009. CRFD accuses the following Amazon products of infringement: Defendants’ streaming media services include, without limitation, Amazon Instant Video, Amazon Prime, Amazon Cloud Player, Amazon Games, and Amazon GameCircle, which conduct a session with a user’s Amazon-enabled device, including Amazon Kindle Fire tablets, computers, televisions, smartphones, game consoles, and Blu-ray players, among other devices, and transfer content to a user’s additional Amazon-enabled devices partly through software components, including but not limited to Amazon’s Whispersync service.
Defendants purport that when a user’s Amazon-enabled devices are networked, the media content on one Amazon-enabled device can be accessed by all Amazon-enabled devices. For example, with Amazon Instant Video, “Whispersync for Videos keeps track of [the user’s] last location in a video so [the user] can resume watching across [the user’s] Kindle Fire, PC, Mac, or one of over 300 compatible TVs, Blu-ray players, or devices.” Complaint ¶ 14.
CRFD is represented by Farnan LLP and Mishcon De Reya New York LLP.
Defendants purport that when a user’s Amazon-enabled devices are networked, the media content on one Amazon-enabled device can be accessed by all Amazon-enabled devices. For example, with Amazon Instant Video, “Whispersync for Videos keeps track of [the user’s] last location in a video so [the user] can resume watching across [the user’s] Kindle Fire, PC, Mac, or one of over 300 compatible TVs, Blu-ray players, or devices.” Complaint ¶ 14.
CRFD is represented by Farnan LLP and Mishcon De Reya New York LLP.
Wow! “Here is a general description of the steps one would need to follow in order to transfer an on-going software session on one device to another device.” –That’s patentable?
“Here is a general description of the steps one would need to follow in order to transcribe any text, via keyboard, to an electronic document. To wit: transcriptionist must receive message (via any means–vision, hearing, olfactory, and press, in order, the corresponding keys on an input device connected to a recording electronic device (including recording media of any type). . . .” –The use is non-obvious. But if someone had simply DESCRIBED the process prior to IBM’s creation of the first mag-card writer back in the mid-70s, he or she would have made a killing when IBM (or whoever) actually manufactured the equipment that made the “method” work. Right?