It’s June, which means it’s time to catch up on who’s suing, settling and making money off of online dating companies.
First up, we have the expert witness resume for Matchmaker.com founder Patrick Michael O’Leary. Patrick now owns ExpertWitness.com, part of a $7 billion industry.
My former company, MatchMaker.com in 1990 addressed just about every area of the Internet Community and Social Networking / Media space. Today I have the Intellectual property of the 1990 version of MatchMaker.com installed and running for the purposes of invalidating Intellectual Property Patent Claims. This Prior Art will invalidate just about any Internet Social Networking / Community / Dating Patent Claim.
This is the most comprehensive description of a dating company that I’ve come across. Not only does he make money off of suing people, he can defend his ancient online dating IP. I bet the guy could put 1/2 of the online dating industry out of business if he tried. The list of dating industry lawsuits at the end of the document is news to me. Great reading for anyone interested in the early days of online dating.
In other legal news, Humor Rainbow, parent company of OKCupid, has struck a deal with Data Match Enterprises. Data Match has sued the company, along with eHarmony, Match, Friend Finder, Date and Singlesnet, in regards to infringement of a patent that covers a database management system.
More proof that the US Patent Office is royally screwed up. I’m all for protecting ideas with merit, but generic, obvious stuff? Lot’s of people make their living defending patents. I have a client with a patent of interest. They don’t like it when I remind them that there is so much obvious prior art out there, better to focus where the real money is, things like creative credit card re-billing, click fraud or 419 scams.
