Patent Lawsuit Gets Bad Review and 1 Star on Yelp
Broad Patent Could Have Large Impact on Groupon, Foursquare, & Future Developers
This past week, Hothand, an Orange County firm, filed a lawsuit against Groupon and Yelp, alleging that these companies’ mobile shopping apps infringe its location technology.
The patent abstract describes it as: “A subscription-based system for providing commerce information for one or more mobile devices for one or more merchants.” The breadth of this patent could pose an issue to the emerging location-based marketing industry. Hothand received its patent in April of 2010 and has already used it to sue Foursquare, the location-based social networking service.
