Case No. O2020_004 | Order of 3 March 2021
We recently reported about this order already on this Blog here. The order is heavily anonymized, and close to nothing is mentioned about the technical subject matter of the patent in suit.
It has taken a little longer than anticipated, but now we are fairly confident that the plaintiff — referred to as a ‘patent troll’ by the defendant — is yodoba AG. The patent-in-suit is EP 1 650 961 B1; see EPO Register and Swissreg for further bibliographic information.
[On a personal note: I had almost given up on deciphering. The order is heavily anonymized, admittedly beyond what I could have hunted down on my own. Luckily, this exercise was a great reminder for me of what a highly motivated team can achieve with cleverness, persistence and a bit of brute force. /MW]
According to yodoba’s website, the company was founded in the year 2000 and had been active in the development of some technology related to «legal downloading», presumably referring to over the air sales of audio and video files by right holders.
Apparently, yodaba had been a high-flying startup at the beginning of the millenium:
Dieter Meier had formerly been shareholder and ‘ambassador’ of yodoba, as reported in yodoba’s newsletter of November 2005. Oh Yeah!
Yodoba was a member of the «Music over the Air Consortium MOC», founded by Siemens. This consortium operated the «Music2You» (M2Y) sales platform, which was used by the online shops of some leading providers such as T-Online and AOL, as well as T-Mobile and O2 (England, Ireland, Germany); see e.g. here.
By yodoba’s own admission on its website, business operation was discontinued in 2011 and the company solely focused on the monetization of EP 961 from here on out:
Im Jahre 2011 hat sich yodoba AG aus dem Download-Business zurück gezogen, nachdem sich dieses defizitär entwickelte und keine Verbesserung der Lage ersichtlich wurde.
This information is consistent with what both plaintiffs and defendants had apparently stated in their briefs:
Further puzzle pieces from the FPC’s order were the fact that exactly one patent exists which is still in force and registered in the plaintiff’s name, an address change and the share capital (purportedly CHF 150’000).
Still, little is known about the defendant. However, based on the subject-matter of EP 961 and what yodoba itself explains about it, we have any reason to assume that it is a business related to TV broadcasting over the internet with playback functionality. Well, there are not many candidates. Stay tuned.
Reported by Philippe KNÜSEL and Martin WILMING
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Case No. O2020_004 | Order of 3 March 2021
yodoba AG
./.
[n/a]
Single Judge:
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- Dr. Mark SCHWEIZER
Court Clerk:
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- Susanne Anderhalden
Representatives of Plaintiff:
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- Stephan ERBE (ThomannFischer)
- Dr. Christian HOCHSTRASSER (ThomannFischer)
- Dr. Dr. Fabian LEIMGRUBER (ThomannFischer), assisting in patent matters
Representatives of Defendant:
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ORDER IN FULL
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PATENT IN SUIT
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COMMERCIAL REGISTER
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