Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Kroy IP Holdings Files Patent Infringement Case against Safeway



Plaintiff: Kroy IP Holdings

Defendant: Safeway

Case Number: 2:12-cv-00800

Date Filed: December 17, 2012

Patent-in-Suit: US7054830

The ‘830 patent is currently assigned[1] to Kroy IP Holdings (source: Maxval’s Assignment Database). The patent entitled System and method for incentive programs and award fulfillment was issued on May 30, 2006 and expires[2] by March 18, 2018. The patent describes a method of providing incentive programs over a computer network in which a host may provide sponsoring companies with the capability to buy prepackaged or self-built incentive programs, offer such incentive programs to consumers, provide sponsoring companies and retailers with the capability to associate prizes with incentive programs, provide sponsoring companies, retailers and consumers with convenient fulfillment of prizes, and store and manipulate databases regarding all of the foregoing.

About the Parties
Safeway is one of North America's food retailers, with nearly 1,675 stores. It also operates regional supermarket companies, including The Vons Companies, Dominick's Finer Foods, Carr-Gottstein Foods, Genuardi's Family Markets, and Randall's Food Markets. Safeway owns grocery e-retailer GroceryWorks.com. 

As in Complaint
Plaintiff alleges that defendant infringes the above patent by making use of the incentive program that is claimed in the ‘830 patent. An online database is maintained by defendant’s host computer allowing customers to keep track of their accumulated points. The application in the host computer that provides reward fulfillment options to each customer based on their account information, infringes the above patent.

Other Case(s) Filed by Plaintiff
Kroy IP has filed a complaint (6:11-cv-00330) against Loyaltyworks, Frosch International Travel, ACI Worldwide and Capita Technologies (defendants) on June 23, 2011 which is currently pending.
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[1] MaxVal offers Patent Assignment Alert service where subscribers receive email alerts when assignments relating to target applications, patents or entities of interest are recorded.
[2] 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.

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