Cinemark hit with Patent Lawsuit over Mobile Application

On Monday, November 19, 2012, Aeritas (plaintiff) filed a complaint against Cinemark (defendant) for patent infringement in the U.S. District Court of Texas (case no. 3:12-cv-04722).

Aeritas offers wireless technology solutions for businesses and consumers. The company offers mobile commerce products including Mobile Pass for buying tickets online and downloading to a cell phone. It serves travel, leisure, hospitality, sports and entertainment, and retail industries. Aeritas was formerly known as Propel Technology Team, LLC. Cinemark together with its subsidiaries engages in the motion picture exhibition activities and is a chain of movie theatres. 

The patents involved in this suit are listed below:

Patent Number Current Assignee[*]	Issue Date	Expiration Date[†]	Title
US7706819 Propel Technology Team	Apr 27, 2010	Oct 16, 2020	Mixed-mode interaction
US8055285 Aeritas (as per face page)	Nov 08, 2011	Oct 16, 2020	Mixed-mode interaction

Note: Table information sourced from MaxVal’s Assignment Database.

Aeritas has developed a mobile device location-based information service. According to the complaint, the defendant offers end user mobile applications that allow a user to find Cinemark theatre locations via GPS, purchase movie tickets, search movie listings and trailers, view and share movie information via social network sites, etc. When the end user interacts with these mobile apps, requests are received at Cinemark’s internet-accessible servers and these servers in turn respond to the requests. These end user interactions with Cinemark’s internet-accessible servers allegedly infringe the above patents. 

The plaintiff has filed suits against the companies below:

Company	Case Number	Date Filed	Status
US Airways	1:11-cv-01267	12/21/2011	Pending
United Airlines	1:11-cv-00970	10/13/2011	Pending
Alaska Air	1:11-cv-00967	10/13/2011	Pending
Delta Airlines	1:11-cv-00969	10/13/2011	Pending
Continental Airlines	1:11-cv-00968	10/13/2011	Pending

If you are interested in knowing more about the above cases, please contact us.

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[*]MaxVal offers Patent Assignment Alert service where subscribers receive email alerts when assignments relating to target applications, patents or entities of interest are recorded.

[†] Expected expiration date.  Patent Term Estimator is a free web-based tool that automatically calculates patent terms and expiration dates for U.S. utility patents.