BUSINESS WIRE — Dec 19 — SpeedDate.com secured an exclusive license to U.S. Patent Number 7,203,674 covering key aspects of online speed dating. SpeedDate.com, launched in October 2007 and has hosted over 100,000 online speed dates internationally. SpeedDate.com is also bringing speed dating to social platforms such as meebo. "SpeedDate.com is all about connecting people live, making it a natural partner for meebo", said Seth Sternberg, CEO of Meebo. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WIRE
Mark Brooks: The patent is entitled Method and system to connect and match users in an electronic dating service. Details here. The patent appears to cover the major components of online speed dating. 'Immediate Dating, Invited Dating, Group Dating', along with the telephony involved in online speed dating. Any lawyers care to comment? Will this stand up? There are a few instances of online speed dating being attempted in the past. Match gave it a good shot in 2004. Surely there's some prior art that could undermine this patent?
Not sure why they made a press release now. They licensed the patent back in August – (maybe this was a letter of intent and wasnt finalized until now?). They have displayed the patent reference on their website for the past few months – so there isn’t any news here. The owner of the patent who now resides in Europe did get paid though – he intended to realize this idea himself in early 200x. This business method patent is very easy to design around. There isn’t a need to invalidate the patent as that is a more costly process. Additionally the Supreme Court KSR ruling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleflex) changed the standard of obviousness as applied to patent claims, so invalidation is very likely if ever challenged. If you review the prosecution history the solution is obvious. If you review WooMe they have done exactly that – and this is the same method that other startups have implemented. 2008 will bring a lot of new players to this exciting space (2 are on my radar to launch in Q1). The good thing for the industry and consumer is that this particular patent will not be a barrier to entry for anyone – which is bad news to SpeedDate which have struggled to obtain new users compared to WooMe which is growing at 15x faster even though they launched later and now have 4x as many members as SpeedDate. As for Match.com their phone speed dating service was not successful for obvious reasons. Don’t be surprised to see them and other operators experiment in this space towards the end of 2008.
Not sure why they made a press release now. They licensed the patent back in August – (maybe this was a letter of intent and wasnt finalized until now?). They have displayed the patent reference on their website for the past few months – so there isn’t any news here. The owner of the patent who now resides in Europe did get paid though – he intended to realize this idea himself in early 200x. This business method patent is very easy to design around. There isn’t a need to invalidate the patent as that is a more costly process. Additionally the Supreme Court KSR ruling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleflex) changed the standard of obviousness as applied to patent claims, so invalidation is very likely if ever challenged. If you review the prosecution history the solution is obvious. If you review WooMe they have done exactly that – and this is the same method that other startups have implemented. 2008 will bring a lot of new players to this exciting space (2 are on my radar to launch in Q1). The good thing for the industry and consumer is that this particular patent will not be a barrier to entry for anyone – which is bad news to SpeedDate which have struggled to obtain new users compared to WooMe which is growing at 15x faster even though they launched later and now have 4x as many members as SpeedDate. As for Match.com their phone speed dating service was not successful for obvious reasons. Don’t be surprised to see them and other operators experiment in this space towards the end of 2008.