A Wild Groupon Appears: Intellectual Property Analysis of Mobile Commerce Framework v Groupon
Every so often, an unsuspecting company becomes ensnared in the patent world, sometimes unwittingly. Like a saber tooth tiger blissfully wandering into the La Brea tar pits, its inaugural foray into this ferocious world can lead to becoming lunch or, in some cases, infect them to become perpetrators downstream. Fresh from Groupon’s IPO, the fangs are coming out… and there’s more fangs than mouths – but we’ll get to that a bit later on.
Upstream from where Groupon first decided to drink from the NASDAQ river – under a bridge, if you will – lies an NPE (Non-Practicing Entity) called Mobile Commerce Framework. A subspecies of the patent troll, one of the illusive natural predators of the patent world, Mobile Commerce Framework will be affectionately nicknamed "the MCF," given its particularly uninspiring full name.
The activities of the MCF, like many of the NPE species, are largely unknown. This breed in particular does not even seem to have a web presence to call its virtual home, making us wonder if it is part of the once rarest but now most common breed of NPE species, the Non-Existent Entity. This variety of NPE only appears in the wilds of the judicial plains, doing the bidding of a more dominant NPE. Such seems to be the case with the MCF, which bears the same physical address (possibly attached to its ear, like a tag) as Hothand Inc. It appears that the Hothand cannot yet fully imitate the I.V., an NPE that gracefully weaves its way through the patent grasslands, avoiding (with ease) any traps and snares.
The MCF, inheriting the instincts of the patent troll family, is predatory in nature. Like other NPE’s, it holds patents in its grasp, and waves them violently at any entity, big or small. Every so often, the MCF, like all patent trolls, drags a straying entity into legal battle, beating them with whatever patents they’ve managed to acquire. Records show that, in addition to Groupon, the MCF is only known to have encountered two other social commerce species in the judicial wilds: Yelp! and Foursquare. For this report, we focus our sights on the MCF’s favorite patent, and the one it has asserted against Groupon, Yelp!, Foursquare, the US 7,693,752.
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