A little over a week ago, a lawsuit was filed against Twitter by Virtual Creative Artists LLC (VCU) in the Northern District of Illinois. In the complaint, the plaintiff mentions patent No. 9,501,480, which the USPTO issued on Nov., 22, 2016, titled “Revenue-Generating Electronic Multi-Media Exchange and Process of Operating Same.” The invention covered by this patent relates to the creating and distributing of media content based on submissions received on an electronic media exchange. The other patent involved is No. 9,477,665 with the same title, a continuation patent covering the subsystems and their configuration.

Twitter is accused of directly infringing claim 1 of the above patents. Although the backend functionalities are kept confidential by Twitter, VCU claims several functionalities available through the Twitter platform directly infringe and usetheir patents. For this reason, the plaintiff requests a judgment entered against Twitter and reasonable royalties from them since they have used their patented technology.

Virtual Creative Artists LLC is currently involved in another lawsuit with META, almost identical to this one accusing them of infringing the same patents. What are your thoughts on this case? Will it likely go to a jury trial, or will the VCU seek a settlement?

David R. Bennett and Steven G. Kalberg of Direction IP Law represent the plaintiff Virtual Creative Artists LLC.