Davidson Law Group invalidates Essociate’s Internet affiliate marketing patent on behalf of Crakmedia.

February 11, 2015, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted Davidson Law Group’s motion for judgment on the pleadings on behalf of its client Crakmedia. The court invalidated Essociate’s patent on a method for configuring affiliate marketing networks to accept “virtual affiliates” based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. The court agreed with Crakmedia and Clickbooth.com, represented by Richard Newman and Darren Franklin, that Essociate’s patent claims do nothing more than apply the abstract idea of receiving and tracking referrals from referral sources to the technological environment of an existing affiliate system. The Court also held that the claimed use of URLs, webmaster identifiers, and correlation tables amounted to “electronic book-keeping,” which did not allow Essociate to monopolize the abstract idea of receiving and tracking referrals on the Internet.

E-Commerce Traffic Patent Invalid Under Alice, Judge Rules (Law360, February 12, 2015)(“Ben M. Davidson of Davidson Law Group LC, representing Crakmedia, told Law360 that the ruling represented the “promise” of the Alice decision.  ‘You don’t have to suffer through summary judgment, expert discovery and trial to get out of a frivolous case,” he said. “The Alice decision allowed the court make a decision on the merits at the pleadings stage.”) Read CrakMedia’s motion…