A half-dozen household name online travel sites have been sued by a little-known company for patent infringement.
Alloqate, a company in Pasadena, Calif., alleges that the deal-detection, matching and alert features of DealBase, Expedia, Hotwire, Kayak, Travelocity and Orbitz infringe on Patent No. US 6,615,184 B1, which was granted to Mitzi Hicks of Humble, Texas, on Sept. 2, 2003.
The patent is described as a "System and method for providing customers seeking a product or service at a specified discount in a specified geographic area with information as to suppliers offering the same."
Several companies outside the travel industry have been sued, as well, but the bulk of the defendants are online travel companies.
Alloqate versus DealBase, filed in May in U.S. District Court in Delaware and publicized this week in an Orbitz Worldwide financial disclosure, points to DealBase's Deal Detector, Expedia's Fare Alert, Hotwire's TripWatcher, Kayak's Price Alert, Travelocity's FareWatcher Plus and Orbitz's Deal Detector as allegedly infringing on the patent.
The patent allegedly covers supplier information pertaining to specific geographic areas and stored on a server; the server storing customer information about a desired product/service and minimum discount; and the server sending that information to the customer.
Several of the defendants, including Expedia, Kayak, Hotwire and Travelocity, answered the complaint in early July, arguing that their products do not infringe on the patent, that the patent is unenforceable, and that there was an unreasonable delay in filing claims of intellectual property infringement.
Expedia, for example, alleges the patent is invalid because it "fails to claim a patentable subject insofar as it seeks to claim an abstract idea."
The relationship between Alloqate and the patent inventor wasn't immediately apparent. Lawyers for Alloqate didn't immediately respond to Tnooz inquiries.
Alloquate seeks damages, attorneys' fees and an injunction barring the alleged infringement.
The federal case is ongoing.
Update: In an amendment registration statement filed Aug. 12, 2011, Kayak says it is subject to "several" patent infringement claims. Kayak is also involved in litigation with Parallel Networks over alleged infringement on a patent pertaining to client-server communication over a low-speed communications link.