IBM Corp. is suing travel conglomerate Expedia Inc. over the use of patented technology, days after settling a dispute over the same patents with rival travel firm Priceline Group Inc.

IBM is alleging that Expedia, which owns a range of other travel sites including Orbitz, Hotwire and Hotels.com, is breaching patents relating to how online content is delivered to customers. The four patents cover ad technology, sign-ups, tracking communications and various other aspects used by Expedia’s sites.

Digging into the details, at first glance the patents themselves seem awfully broad, perhaps not surprisingly given some date back to the 1980s and describe practices that would seem, in some cases, to be in common use in 2018.

The patents (via The Register) include:

• US Patent 5,796,967: “A method for presenting applications in an interactive service” that outlines how the interface of a web-based application can be used to shift processing tasks from a server to a client PC. The patent was filed by 1989 to be used by pre-internet service Prodigy of which Intel was then an investor
• US Patent 7,072,849: “A method for presenting advertising in an interactive service” covering how web services can put ads on client machines. Another Prodigy-related patent filed in 1988
• US Patent 5,961,601: “Preserving state information in a continuing conversation between a client and server networked via a stateless protocol” describes communications via CGI in a web browser, filed in 1996.
• US Patent 7,631,346: “A method, system, apparatus, and computer program product are presented to support computing systems of different enterprises that interact within a federated computing environment” broadly covers a single sign-on used with multiple services, filed in 2005.

“Defendants have built their business model on the use of IBM’s patents,” the lawsuit claims. “Moreover, despite IBM’s repeated attempts to negotiate, defendants refuse to negotiate a license.” IBM said it initially reached out to both Expedia and Orbitz in previous years to settle the matter, without success. “Because IBM’s over six-year struggle to negotiate a license agreement that remedies defendants’ unlawful conduct has failed, IBM has been forced to seek relief through litigation,” the suit continues.

The suit comes after IBM and Priceline settled a suit based on the same patents last week. Although the details of the settlement were confidential, Big Blue said in a statement that that as part of the deal, “parties will obtain patent cross-licenses to each company’s worldwide patent portfolio.” That isn’t the first time IBM has come to an agreement to cross-license patents, having settled a dispute with Twitter Inc. in 2014 over some of the same patents.

A settlement may well end up the cheaper option for Expedia, given that not only is IBM seeking an injunction to have Expedia and its sites stop using the patented technology, but it’s also seeking royalties “on the billions of dollars in revenue that defendants have received based on their infringement.”

Photo: mastershibby/Flickr