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30 March 2017Patents

Licensing company takes on Yahoo in patent infringement suit

A licensing company has sued Yahoo and unnamed customers and licensees for infringing four of its patents covering web-based technology.

TS Patents filed its patent infringement suit at the US District Court for the Northern District of California yesterday, March 29.

According to the suit, TS Patents is owned by Sheng Tai Tsao, the inventor of multiple US patents and pending patent applications.

Tsao formed TS Patents for the purpose of licensing and enforcing his inventions.

The suit said that Tsao has presented his patented technology to Yahoo since 2004 and last year tried to communicate with the company about potential licensing.

In 2005, Tsao allegedly emailed a Yahoo manager, advised that the technology he had invented would “immediately add values to Yahoo’s business” and asked for a meeting.

Yahoo declined the offer of a meeting, but Tsao later learned that Yahoo had adopted the technology reflected in the patents, the suit claimed.

The suit said Yahoo had introduced web folder technology to its services.

TS Patents argued that Yahoo had infringed four of its patents, including US number 8,396,891, called “Method and apparatus of dynamic updating web portals”, and number 8,713,442, titled “Method and apparatus for information exchange over a web-based environment”.

The other patents are number 8,799,473, called “Concurrent web-based multi-task support for computing system”, and 9,280,547, titled “System and method for displaying and operating multi-layered item list in browser with supporting of concurrent users”.

TS Patents asked for a permanent injunction against Yahoo, compensatory damages, pre-judgment interest, costs, attorneys’ fees and a trial by jury.

A spokesperson for TS Patents told WIPR that it had no comment at this time.

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