Earlier this month, a particularly aggressive non-practicing entity (NPENon-Practicing Entity. A broad term associated with trolls but now disfavored because it includes universities and legitimate technology developers that seek to license technology in advance rather than after a producing company has independently developed it.) – TicketMatrix LLC – quietly dropped a pairPatent Application Information Retrieval System. The USPTO's electronic system for storing and accessing information regarding a patent. There is a public version for searching file wrappers. of patent infringement lawsuits against two National Football League teams, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Dallas Cowboys. TicketMatrix’s decision to walk away from its claims followed the dismissal of two cases it had filed against other teams, the Houston Texans and Seattle Seahawks.
In all four lawsuits, TicketMatrix had attempted to enforce a vague patent covering tools that allow fans to access tickets for the same seat across multiple games. TicketMatrix had accused the teams of infringing U.S. Patent No. 7,831,452, which covers various “methods for providing ticket options for multiple events connected to a certain player or team.”
But the courts were not convinced this constituted an invention. In June, the Texans successfully moved to dismiss, with a federal judge ruling the asserted patent covered an abstract ideaAbstract ideas are not patent-eligible subject matter. This judicially developed exclusion was most recently explained by the Supreme Court in Bilski v. Kappos, 2010. and lacked sufficient detail about how the technology actually worked. The same month, the Chiefs called the claims “nonsensical and difficult to parse” in their own motion to dismiss, arguing that the patent was based on basic human behavior. Meanwhile, TicketMatrix dropped its suit against the Seahawks after the court noted it never properly served the team.
TicketMatrix gave no public explanation for dropping its cases. But taken together, the dismissals reflect a pattern: weak, overly broad patents being used to try to extract value from entities that actually use technologies to do business.
Lawsuits like these are growing more and more common. In 2023, Arena IP LLC sued the Minnesota Vikings in the Northern District of Texas and the New England Patriots in the Southern District of Texas, each over a separate patent related to stadium communication systems. Earlier this year, Major League Baseball was sued over dynamic ticketing technology. That case, brought by a known backer of patent trollAn entity in the business of being infringed — by analogy to the mythological troll that exacted payments from the unwary. Cf. NPE, PAE, PME. See Reitzig and Henkel, Patent Trolls, the Sustainability of ‘Locking-in-to-Extort’ Strategies, and Implications for Innovating Firms. suits, involved a patent on blocking unauthorized ticket screenshots—a basic fraud-prevention tool rebranded as an “invention.”
These lawsuits are an example of the type of waste that occurs when vague, invalid patents are issued in error by the Patent Office. And it’s especially troubling that some in Congress want to further lower the bar for patent eligibility through legislation like the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA), which we’ve covered on Patent Progress before.
PERA would lower the bar for patentability, allowing a wide range of low-quality, abstract, and obvious patents to be granted, enforced, and weaponized by NPEsNon-Practicing Entity. A broad term associated with trolls but now disfavored because it includes universities and legitimate technology developers that seek to license technology in advance rather than after a producing company has independently developed it. against legitimate businesses. That will make the problem of meritless litigation even worse.
Lawsuits against professional sports franchises and leagues generate more press attention than your garden variety patent trollAn entity in the business of being infringed — by analogy to the mythological troll that exacted payments from the unwary. Cf. NPE, PAE, PME. See Reitzig and Henkel, Patent Trolls, the Sustainability of ‘Locking-in-to-Extort’ Strategies, and Implications for Innovating Firms. litigation. They should also serve as a cautionary tale of what happens when bad patents are weaponized.
Advocates for so-called “reforms” claim that changes are necessary to keep pace with economic competitors around the globe, but their primary outcome would be more lawsuits. That’s bad news, not just for professional sports owners and their players, but for all of us who want to see a more innovative economy in the years ahead.
