Communication Interface Technologies Files 8 Push Notification Patent Cases


Communication Interface Technologies filed multiple patent infringement suits against a variety of companies, Capital One Financial Corporation, Cinemark Holdings, Inc., Yum! Brands, Inc., FedEx Corporation, Texas Instruments, American Messaging Services, PepsiCo, and Rent-A-Center. The suits were filed in the Texas Eastern District Court. Communication Interface Technologies is represented by Devlin Law Firm LLC.

The patents-in-suit are U.S. Patent Nos. 6,574,239 (the ’239 patent), 8,266,296 (the ’296 patent), and 8,291,010 (the ’010 patent). The patents “provide many advantages over the prior art, and in particular improved the operations of communications between remote units such as wireless computing and communications devices and remote servers.”

Capital One allegedly infringed the ’239 patent, through the “making, using, selling, offering to sell, importing and/or providing and causing to be used products, specifically one or more mobile device applications.” The infringing products “perform a method in which wireless push notification messages are sent over TLS sessions, and the remote server and the client-side application establish a separate TLS connection for traditional client-server communications.” Specifically, claim 7 calls for “use in controlling a virtual session on a server, a method comprising: establishing a virtual session with a remote unit, the virtual session being instantiated to support at least one application layer program.” Capital One’s Accused Products allegedly utilize this patented information. As a result of this exemplary similarity, Communication Interface Technologies claims that Capital One infringes on this patent.

Cinemark Holdings allegedly infringed on the ’296 patent through the use of push notifications on the Cinemark Theatres App. The accused app “perform[s] a method in which wireless push notification messages are sent over TLS sessions, and the remote server and the client-side application establish a separate TLS connection for traditional client-server communications.” Cinemark’s infringing products use “[w]ireless push notification messages…sent over Transport Layer Security (TLS) sessions.” The remote server “establishes a TLS session with a Cinemark Theatres App…running on a user’s smartphone or tablet.” This remote server initiates a push notification message to be sent to Cinemark’s app on a user’s device. As a result of this information, the plaintiff claims that Cinemark uses the technology in the ’296 patent.

Communication Interface Technologies also alleged Yum! Brands infringed the ’010 patent through the KFC All-Stars App, Yum Mobile Forms App, and the KFC Suppertime Stories App. Yum!’s infringing apps have a “[w]ireless push notification messages…sent over Transport Layer Security (TLS) sessions. Also, the remote server and the client-side application establish a separate TLS connection for traditional client-server communications.” As a result of the similarities of the patented technology and Yum!’s alleged use of this information, Communication Interface Technology claims it infringes on its patent.

The other defendants allegedly infringe on these patents in similar ways as the above examples. Communication Interface Technologies has sought an adjudication of infringement of the patents-in-suit, an award for damages, an award for costs and fees, and other relief as determined by the court.