SurveyMonkey Unicorn

Surveymonkey is an online survey development cloud-based company founded in 1999 by Ryan Finley. SurveyMonkey provides free customizable surveys as well as high end for purchase services such as data analysis, sample selection, bias elimination, and data representation tools. SurveyMonkey also offers large-scale enterprise options for companies interested in brand management and consumer-focused marketing. SurveyMonkey has approximately 25 million users and has annual revenue of $113 million. 

Survey monkey has extremely high revenue as well as an extremely valuable platform, yet only has three patents. SurveyMonkey has been around for almost 15 years, however, like many other unicorns, has not had much success with the USPTO. SurveyMonkeys’ two largest competitors are Formstack and Qualtrics. Formstack has no patents, which is not a big concern for SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey’s other big competitor Qualtrics, is used at many big research universities like Berkeley. I have personally used Qualtrics surveys in my Haas elective courses when the teacher is trying to get feedback about the course. Qualtrics has one patent, and that is its media management system for mobile devices that was granted very recently on December 31, 2015. Neither SurveyMonkey nor its competitors have serious patent portfolios, which could be a problem in their attempt to counter sue others in patent litigation cases against eachother.

If SurveyMonkey wants to increase their patent portfolio, I would suggest they try and patent certain features in their premium service line. They have so much power in their data analytics platforms that could be very valuable in royalties down the line as everything becomes digitalized. SurveyMonkey could also go about merging or acquiring other companies to gain access and control to their patents.

Airbnb is a Unicorn with no patents

Airbnb is a website that users are able to list, find, and rent properties. It has greatly expanded since its founding in 2008, and currently has 1,500,000 listings in 34,000 cities and 190 countries. Airbnb is headquartered in San Francisco, and was able to use the hot real estate market in the Bay Area to jumpstart their business. Airbnb built their brand loyalty and community on trust. The site has a spot for profiles and reviews as well as an integrated smart messaging system that enables hosts and guest to talk with confidence as well as collect and transfer payments securely.

Airbnb is a unicorn and has no patents registered to the USPTO, but is in the process of patenting 5 of their leading technologies that make their service unique and better than competitors. VRBO and Homeaway are the two single biggest competitors of Airbnb. Homeaway is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ and operates with a different business model than Airbnb. They have 40 websites in 22 languages to reach their broad customer base. Homeaway has two different products, the basic ad with runs for $349 and the premium edition, which starts at $1,000. The big difference between Homeaway and Airbnb is the payment structure. Airbnb collects a commission when the vacation rental is booked, as opposed to these other sites that charge the fee up front for advertising. This is where I believe Airbnb has the advantage, and will be very successful in blocking competitors by patenting their unique way of processing vacation rental transactions. I also think that they have a lot of potential in building up a patent portfolio for their mobile app, which is extremely convenient to make reservations when on the go.

Airbnb has been active in the mergers and acquisitions space, trying to acquire vacation rental services in foreign markets. I look forward to seeing how Airbnb goes from a unicorn to one of the biggest providers of travel accommodations. Its truly amazing how a company who owns no real estate could become a leader in its industry and one of the most valuable companies in the space.

Trackman Golf Ball Monitor

I have been playing golf since the age of 8 with my father, and played competitive golf in high school. I worked diligently on my swing, and one of the most helpful tools I had was a trackman. A trackman is A golfing apparatus that estimates the distance that a golf ball travels. It has a doppler radar unit, a correlating circuit, and a display. The doppler radar unit measures the doppler shift of the struck golf by translating the measured doppler shift to an estimated carry distance for the ball. The display shows the estimated carry distance. James Witler and Douglas Spike patented the trackman in 1996.

The three main claims are:

1- A golfing apparatus for determining the carry distance of a golf ball which a golfer has struck, said golfing apparatus comprising: correlating the measured Doppler shift to an estimated carry distance of the struck golf ball using a predetermined factor, said predetermined factor relating the measured Doppler shift to an observed carry distance of a previously struck golf ball.

2- A golfing apparatus for estimating the carry distance of a struck golf ball, said golfing apparatus comprising: a speed measuring mechanism having a boresight disposed at an angle in the range of zero degrees to twenty five degrees with respect to level ground wherein said speed measuring mechanism measures the speed of the struck golf ball.

3- A golfing apparatus for determining the carry distance of a struck golf ball, said golfing apparatus comprising: a correlator electrically coupled to said speed measuring mechanism whereby said correlator correlates said measured component of the speed of the struck golf ball with an empirically derived factor for use in estimating the carry distance of the struck golf ball.

The key to the claim that the trackman is not prior art lies in the mathematically driven factor that is multiplied by the Doppler shift. This unique formula for calculating the distance that a golf ball travels was unique enough to merit it a patent that is valid. In the patent, there are several citations of prior patents and how the Trackman technology differs.  

The Fender Pickup Unit

The pickup unit for electric stringed instruments (US 2,455,575A ) was patented in 1948 by Clarence Fender and Clayton Kauffman. Clarence Fender is the founder of the famous guitar company Fender Guitars, which is know for their high quality guitars that produce great sounds. I was particularly intrigued to look at this patent because I own a Fender Squier Stratocaster guitar that makes an amazing sound.

The patent makes three distinct claims:

1-    To provide an electrical pickup unit for stringed instruments that produces a more natural tone than has previously been attained by electrical pick-up devices of this character.

2-    To provide an electrical pick up unit for stringed instruments-where in the string itself is the only moving element in the magnetic circuit; thus producing with great-fidelity corresponding fluctuations or vibration: in the associated electrical circuit.

3-    To provide an electrical pick-up where in all soundboard sounding-boxes may be eliminated.

The figure below shows the key parts of the pickup, which are instrumental in proving that Fender’s new pickup produced a new, much clearer sound than other devices out at the time. It specifies that the pickup is for stringed instruments of all sorts, including ones that are held in the hand and others that rest on the floor. The patent seeks to establish that one of the strings must establish a common node point with one of the pole tips, thus picking up all oscillations of the musical string.

                                   

I believe that this patent is valid because it explains the three distinct and unique claims it has in a way that expands on and does not merely replicate prior art. The patent goes into detail about the importance of the specific metals and how they are connected to each other to get the crisp sound they are looking for from the strings.

                                                         

IBM Sues Groupon over 1990 Prodigy Patent

IBM has begun to push large-scale Internet companies to pay patent licensing fee because IBM invented the Prodigy Service, which is patented and came before the current version of the Internet. On March 2 IBM filed a lawsuit against Groupon claiming that Groupon infringed on four IBM patents, two crucial ones being 5,796,967, and 7,072,849. IBM claims that Groupon infringed on Prodigy, which is defined by IBM as the novel method for presenting applications and advertisements. The complaint by IBM was filed in a federal court in Delaware, and is a very similar lawsuit to the one that IBM brought against other large Internet giants Priceline, Kayak, and OpenTable. Other allegations in the case involve patent 5,961,01 that claims to preserve that state between a client and a server. It legitimizes the “single sign on technology,” which enables anyone using the site to authorize that it is the client once during each session. This may seem obvious at first and way to broad to patent, but it is clearly stated in IBM’s patent 7,631,346.

IBM is fiercely claiming that this is willful patent infringement because Groupon has made no strides in seeking a licensing agreement after several attempts to reach out from IBM’s legal team. IBM apparently notified Groupon that it had infringed on ‘967, ‘849, and ‘346 in 2011 and has since informed Groupon with no response. IBM engineers who invented the technology in these three patents assert that the applications enable data and program code to be much more efficient in the Prodigy system then conventional systems.

IBM has had success in the past with their patent infringement cases, winning a settlement from Twitter for $36 million in 2013 when Twitter was on the verge of its IPO. In 2006, IBM sued Amazon in Terry, Texas, the notorious pro-plaintiff Eastern District Court of Texas over patents that involved foundational online commerce.