How to Stop Frivolous QR Code Patent Attacks
Scanbuy and Marshall Feature Recognition Team to Educate Industry on How to Stop Frivolous QR Code Patent Attacks
Scanbuy to Offer a ‘Stop the Trolls’ Toolkit for Brands Battling Patent Threats
New York, NY – September 30, 2013 – Scanbuy, Inc., the leading mobile engagement solutions provider, and Marshall Feature Recognition LLC (MFR), the largest and most significant scannable code (ex. QR Code) patent holder, today announced a broad collaboration to help educate companies to protect themselves from patent attacks in the QR Code space. Over the last year Scanbuy has noticed an alarming rise in QR Code patent litigation filings and letter threats of litigation. These facts combined with the frivolous nature of some of the claims made has compelled the companies to educate and provide the tools that any firm so threatened can use to protect themselves against much of this litigation blackmail.
With its new licensing of the MFR portfolio, together with its other patent holdings, Scanbuy will offer a “Stop the Trolls!” toolkit to help firms combat lawsuits that claim their QR Code usage violates other’s patents. The toolkit will have features such as a white paper, legal precedents, prior art, advice from other companies, and additional resources for firms to defend themselves against gratuitous patent lawsuits. Scanbuy will promote the jointly created toolkit to businesses that incorporate or wish to incorporate QR Codes in their marketing campaigns.
“MFR has the oldest, most extensive patent portfolio in the QR Code space and continues to grow the portfolio,” said Mike Wehrs, CEO and president of Scanbuy. “Some companies who provide QR Code services are claiming they have a license from MFR where none exist. That’s not stopping Non Practicing Entities, NPEs (trolls) from suing firms to force a settlement through threat of high legal fees.”
There is currently a strong movement across the US legal system and abroad to address patent litigation abuse and reform. According to recent reports, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez has requested an investigation of the patent troll business model.
According to Wehrs, Scanbuy’s own patents and the agreements with MFR, ETH and others in the industry ensure Scanbuy’s customers are protected from patent lawsuits when they create QR Code campaigns through the company’s ScanLife mobile engagement platform.
“MFR has one of the largest patent portfolios available for licensing in the QR Code industry, and we look forward to working with Scanbuy to provide the intellectual property needed to combat baseless lawsuits,” said Spencer Rathus, President and lead inventor, Marshall Feature Recognition LLC. “That’s why we’ve recently teamed again with our longtime partner, Scanbuy, to free brands from this harassment so that they can focus attention on important tasks like growing their business. MFR continues to grow its patent portfolio in ways that support current uses of QR and other scannable codes and future developments in the use of scannable codes to link electronic media to the physical world.“
About Marshall Feature Recognition LLC
Marshall Feature Recognition LLC (MFR) is an intellectual property firm devoted to developing new ways of linking objects in the physical world to electronic information. MFR holds more than 30 U.S. patents in the QR and scannable code space and is actively involved in expanding its patent portfolio, branching out beyond current applications of QR code technology in ways that will provide a wider array of uses of scannable codes and other machine recognizable features, such as images, to link consumers to product-related information and services.
About Scanbuy
Scanbuy is the global leader in developing mobile engagement solutions that power intelligent connections between the physical and digital world. The ScanLife suite of products consists of a cloud-based platform used by a wide variety of industries including retail, CPG, and media to create, manage and monitor dynamic mobile engagement campaigns. The ScanLife mobile app is used by millions of people around the world to discover new information and is available for all major platforms including Android and iOS.
ScanLife processes millions of mobile barcode scans, mobile URL requests and NFC engagements from over 150 different countries and is headquartered in New York City with local offices throughout North America, Europe and Latin America. Scanbuy has the largest and oldest patent portfolio of any company in the industry, owning 19 patents globally and licensing more than 40 patents to cover our entire solution. The company’s investors include Motorola Solutions Ventures, Google Inc., and Masthead Venture Partners. For more information, visit us at www.scanlife.com.
# # #
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Steve Byford
Global Results Comms (GRC)
+1 949 307-5908 (ph)