Patent Holder Sues Basically Anyone Who Offers Recipes Or 'Meal Planning' Online
from the damn dept
THREsq alerted us to the news of a company named DietGoal, which appears to not exist for any reason other than to sue over patents, and which has sued the TV network Bravo for creating a recipe finder website. The claim is that it violates US Patent 6,585,516 for a "method and system for computerized visual behavior analysis, training, and planning." The patent basically seems to describe an online recipe database in which "the user can use the Picture Menus to choose meals for a particular time period to correspond to a customized eating plan."I started to look further into the lawsuit, and I realized that Bravo was not the only target of DietGoal. Not by a long shot. Last September, right before the new patent law went into effect making it difficult to bundle defendants, DietGoal sued a ton of sites -- mainly focused on restaurants (including, but not limited to, Arby's, Chick-fil-A, Dairy Queen, Dunkin' Donuts, Jack in the Box, McDonald's, Panda Express, Taco Bell, Sonic, Wendy's, Burger King, Whole Foods, Tim Hortons, Dominos and Starbucks) as well as a few non-restaurants, including Weight Watchers, Google, IAC and Hearst Communications. If you look at the docket on that one, there are a ton of "dismissals" by DietGoal, which likely means that it was successful in getting the companies to pay up. Others do appear to be fighting it and hitting back with counterclaims and questioning the validity of the patent. Some, like Dominos and Wegmans also sought to break apart the case and make DietGoal face each defendant individually in different cases. That case has also bounced around among a few different judges already.
On April 3rd, DietGoals filed an amended complaint in that original case, attempting to add in a huge list of new defendants -- including Bravo and a bunch of others (many of whom we'll discuss in a bit). On May 24th, the magistrate judge denied DietGoal's motion to file that third amended complaint with all those other parties.
That brings us up to this week, in which DietGoal filed a bunch of lawsuits against a variety of companies (those it had tried to lump into this lawsuit) -- with each one being sued individually. So... yes, there's the lawsuit against Bravo, but also suits against AllRecipes.com, CalorieKing, ConAgra (for having a product nutrition search engine on its site -- no, I'm not kidding, check the complaint), General Mills, Nestle, Nutrisystem, Food.com, SparkPeople, Time, Inc. (for RealSimple.com), WebMD and some others as well.
Basically, it looks as though the DietGoal is operating under the premise that anyone who offers recipes online should have to pay it some money. Of course, all of this should make you wonder: was a patent really needed for the sake of encouraging companies to put databases of recipes online?
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Filed Under: food, patent troll, recipes
Companies: dietgoal
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Definitely wasn't needed
Of course that would be harder, and probably not make as much money.
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Re: Definitely wasn't needed
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Just mail out an invoice for "Patent Licensing fee - Patent # XXXXX". It still only works at about the same rate, but once they've paid it's a slam dunk if you ever do need to sue. Also saves you the costs of suing minus some scary looking letterhead, envelope and a stamp.
Even the stamp is cheaper since you'd most likely be sending enough to qualify for bulk rate....
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So from what I see is that someone took an idea that had existed previously, added on a computer and some computer terms and got a patent.
Wouldn't Deal-a-Meal be prior art without a computer UI? It had a cardboard UI and vinyl choice storage.
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Prior art?
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Counterproductive usage
Other companies, without the patent, have put up recipes online. Clearly, there was no need for the patent to incentivize such behavior.
Therefore, as the patent is producing the exact opposite behavior as is intended by both the plaintiff and the defendant, the patent should be invalidated.
Simple.
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This is looking at a menu...on the internet! See? Completely different.
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Before you can sue for patent infringement, you need to have a product or service in the marketplace that that patent covers. You also need to have attempted to succeed in that marketplace (no getting a patent, deliberately throwing out some garbage products, then suing), said attempt to be deliberated by accredited third parties.
Without that, you can't sue.
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And I've had the same thought regarding patents as Rikuo just put forth.
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While I understand this argument, I'm not convinced it really makes sense. If we believe that a patent really is necessary for disclosing how something is done, then what of, say, a university that patents something and wants to commercialize it by licensing the patent? Under your system, they're stuck unless they also build the product itself.
There can be, in theory, a reasonable role for someone to license the patent to someone who can build it.
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There is usually much more to stories like this than merely filing patent applications in the hope of winning the lottery.
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Its a little painful to look at.
While they are offering a diet menu planning thing, how they think other sites just offering recipes or nutritional information about their products is stealing their idea seems to be a stretch.
We show pictures of food, they show pictures of food... TOTALLY STOLE MY IDEA!
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DietFit LLC and DietGoal do not appear to be the same entities. It's possible that DietFit is just a licensee.
That said, are you REALLY arguing that this patent is valid?
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DietGoal is one of a series of LLCs (which appear to be driven by IP) having common principals, Daniel Mitry and Timothy Salmon. Since DietGoal is relying upon Dr. Alabaster's patents, there is obviously some unspecified relationship between the three of them.
And, no, I am not arguing that the patent is valid. The presumption of validity is not, of course, the same as a judicial declaration of validity.
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More patented homework assignments.
This is a basic programming problem. You could employ a "database" to solve it (or not). It's the fodder for University homework assignments and basic programs printed out in 80s computer magazines.
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I hate desperate losers
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This reminds me of...
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A mahogany mouse trap
This is a wonderful example of something that's simple enough for some college CS students to replicate given no information beyond the description of the "invention". It's the kind of thing that should get laughed out of the PTO.
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Can we build an infringing site in the comments section?
Would it be sufficient to infringe, say, just claim 2?
2. A system of computerized meal planning, comprising:
a User Interface;
a Database of food objects; and
a Meal Builder, which displays on the User Interface meals from the Database, and wherein a user can change content of said meals and view the resulting meals' impact on customized eating goals.
i.e. any website with a meal database, except for eating goals bit (which most of the defendants don't seem to offer either)
While I'm struggling to find anything in the patent that wouldn't be obvious to someone skilled in the art (in this case, presumably a web developer who eats food), some of the other claims do at least discuss dietary planning and advice to meet weight loss goals,* but I can't see anything on the Bravo site or some others that offer this.
Would I really infringe a patent by putting a few recipes into a database, adding some HTML with a search form and using this query?
SELECT * FROM recipes WHERE meal="lunch" AND consideration="low carb" AND name LIKE "%steak%";
* Though not in any particularly useful way so as to tell anyone how they actually do this.
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Re: Can we build an infringing site in the comments section?
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What they ought to be doing is talking to ICE and DOJ about using the same sort of convoluted logic they used to seize the likes of Dajaz or Megaupload to shut these sites down completely.
Imagine the audacity of companies like Nestle or Bravo thinking they can just steal someone's idea to compete in the marketplace.
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Gotta say it....
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Re: Gotta say it....
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What's internet got to do with it?
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Recipe programs
If the patent was provided in 2002 than it had lots of priors that should have kept it from being issued.
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Thanks.
James
https://mywegmansconnect.onl/
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Why panda express restaurant giving free meals to the customers?
Because of panda express fast food restaurant conducting an online feedback survey to the customers to know about their restaurant and to improve their services. That's why they are giving free meals to the customers who are participated in the latest panda express feedback survey. You can visit this official panda express survey website and take the survey https://pandaexpressfeedbacks.com/
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This is sad news but we can improvise. BTW, thanks for the information.
https://mykfcexperienced.com/
https://jcpkiosk.net
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Pandaexpress feedback program is an excellent place to get free meals. https://Pandaexpresscomfeedbackss.Com is giving a platform for its customers to leave their feedback about the restaurant. Complete the survey within the valid period of receipt to get confirmed free meal coupons.
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