Media Outlets Including Forbes Hit With Lawsuit

Many reputed media stations including, Forbes, Inc., American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., and Discovery Communications, Inc. have been targeted with a lawsuit for willful patent infringement filed by Texas-based Bartonfalls LLC.

The lawsuit was filed with the US District Court of EDTX on October 11, 2016, where Bartonfalls claims that the companies have infringed the US patent 7,917,922.  The patent relates to a method that integrates a plurality of television signal sources into a cohesive audio/video environment.

Claim 1 of the ‘922 patent describes a “method for automatically changing from a first TV program to an alternate TV program at a TV viewer location.” The accused companies in the suit either sell or provide a method for automatically changing from one TV program to another.

Bartonfalls stated that the companies have willfully infringed claim 1 of the ‘922  patent, “with knowledge of the patent and in spite of an objectively high likelihood that its actions constituted infringement.”

According to the USPTO and MaxVal’s own research, the accused companies haven’t given any indication as to how they are going to tackle the alleged infringement.  Below are the details of the cases.