Disintermediation Services Inc v. Liveadmins LLC

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: Disintermediation Services Inc (Delaware)
  • Defendant: Liveadmins LLC (Illinois)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Freeborn & Peters LLP
• Case Identification: 1:22-cv-06539, N.D. Ill., 11/22/2022
• Venue Allegations: Plaintiff alleges venue is proper in the Northern District of Illinois because Defendant is an Illinois limited liability company with its headquarters and a regular and established place of business in Chicago, and has allegedly committed substantial acts of infringement in the district.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s web chat services infringe four patents related to a real-time communication system that facilitates conversations between anonymous website users and multiple responders using disparate communication protocols.
• Technical Context: The technology concerns intermediary communication platforms that manage and route real-time chats, a foundational service for online customer support, sales, and user engagement.
• Key Procedural History: The four patents-in-suit are part of a single family and are all continuations of one another, sharing a substantially identical specification. The complaint notes that the patent family has been cited in at least 53 patent applications from companies including Microsoft, IBM, and T-Mobile.

Case Timeline

Date	Event
2011-10-17	Earliest Priority Date for all Patents-in-Suit
2022-02-01	U.S. Patent No. 11,240,183 Issues
2022-05-17	U.S. Patent No. 11,336,597 Issues
2022-05-31	U.S. Patent No. 11,349,787 Issues
2022-08-16	U.S. Patent No. 11,418,466 Issues
2022-11-22	Complaint Filed

II. Technology and Patent(s)-in-Suit Analysis

U.S. Patent No. 11,240,183, "Two-way real time communication system (RTC) that allows asymmetric participation in conversations across multiple electronic platforms," issued February 1, 2022

• The Invention Explained:
  • Problem Addressed: The patent's background section describes deficiencies in prior real-time communication (RTC) systems, which required: (1) both parties to use a common protocol (e.g., email, SMS, or a specific instant messaging application); (2) the initiating party to know the recipient's address; and (3) both parties to be identified to each other (Compl. ¶39; ’183 Patent, col. 1:60-67).
  • The Patented Solution: The invention is an intermediary system that allows an unauthenticated, anonymous website user to communicate with one or more "responders" without needing to share a communication protocol or know the responder's address (’183 Patent, Abstract). The system acts as a proxy, managing and routing messages between the user's web browser and responders who may be on different platforms (e.g., SMS, XMPP), making the disparate responses appear as a unified conversation to the user (Compl. ¶40; ’183 Patent, col. 3:18-25). A key feature is the ability to transfer a conversation from a first responder to a second, different responder while maintaining the communication thread.
  • Technical Importance: This architecture aimed to lower the barrier for initiating customer service or sales chats by removing the need for user registration and allowing businesses to pool responders from various communication platforms seamlessly (Compl. ¶43).
• Key Claims at a Glance:
  • The complaint asserts infringement of at least independent Claim 1 (Compl. ¶140).
  • Essential elements of Claim 1 include:
    • Receiving a request from an unauthenticated user of a web browser for a web page.
    • Sending a question from a first responder to the user.
    • Receiving a first communication (an answer) from the user.
    • Sending the first communication to the first responder and then ending the conversation with the first responder.
    • Identifying, based on the first communication, a second responder different from the first.
    • Determining the communication protocol and address of the second responder.
    • Sending the user's first communication to the second responder.
    • Receiving a reply from the second responder and mapping it back to the original conversation.
    • Sending the reply to the user's web browser, ensuring the reply does not include the communication address of the second responder.
  • Plaintiff reserves the right to assert additional claims (Compl. ¶141).

U.S. Patent No. 11,336,597, "Two-way real time communication system that allows asymmetric participation in conversations across multiple electronic platforms," issued May 17, 2022

• The Invention Explained:
  • Problem Addressed: As a continuation of the ’183 Patent, the ’597 Patent addresses the same deficiencies in prior art RTC systems (Compl. ¶64, incorporating ¶39).
  • The Patented Solution: The solution is substantively identical to that of the ’183 Patent, focusing on an intermediary communication proxy (’597 Patent, Abstract). This patent's claims, however, are structured slightly differently, focusing on a handoff from a first to a second responder without the explicit step of "ending" the conversation with the first responder found in the '183 Patent's claim.
  • Technical Importance: The technology's importance remains the same: enabling seamless, anonymous, and protocol-agnostic real-time communication between website visitors and a business's support or sales agents (Compl. ¶67).
• Key Claims at a Glance:
  • The complaint asserts infringement of at least independent Claim 1 (Compl. ¶148).
  • Essential elements of Claim 1 include:
    • Receiving a communication request from a web browser of an unauthenticated user.
    • Sending a request for information from a first responder to the user.
    • Receiving a first communication from the user.
    • Determining a conversation identifier based on the first communication.
    • Identifying, based on the first communication, a second responder different from the first.
    • Determining a communication protocol for the second responder.
    • Sending the first communication to the second responder based on that protocol.
    • Receiving a reply from the second responder.
    • Mapping the reply to the web browser using the conversation identifier and sending it to the web browser.
  • Plaintiff reserves the right to assert additional claims (Compl. ¶149).

Multi-Patent Capsule: U.S. Patent No. 11,349,787

• Patent Identification: U.S. Patent No. 11,349,787, "Two-way real time communication system that allows asymmetric participation in conversations across multiple electronic platforms," issued May 31, 2022 (Compl. ¶88).
• Technology Synopsis: This patent, also a continuation, describes a system that allows a conversation with an unauthenticated user to persist across multiple webpages or upon a webpage reload (Compl. ¶91). It achieves this by storing associations between the conversation, user requests, and a conversation identifier in a persistent data store, and then retrieving the conversation history upon a new request from the user's browser (Compl. ¶94).
• Asserted Claims: At least independent Claim 1 is asserted (Compl. ¶156).
• Accused Features: The complaint alleges that Defendant’s web chat system infringes by, among other things, facilitating communication with an unauthenticated user and storing and retrieving the conversation for that user (Compl. ¶¶95, 156).

Multi-Patent Capsule: U.S. Patent No. 11,418,466

• Patent Identification: U.S. Patent No. 11,418,466, "Two-way real time communication system that allows asymmetric participation in conversations across multiple electronic platforms," issued August 16, 2022 (’466 Patent, front page; cf. Compl. ¶113).
• Technology Synopsis: This patent focuses on an architecture where a single responder can communicate with multiple, different users who are using different communication protocols (Compl. ¶116). The system manages these parallel conversations by determining the active communication protocol for each user, storing associations for each conversation in a persistent data store, and routing messages accordingly, which improves the functioning of the computer system by eliminating the need for protocol-specific back-end systems (Compl. ¶¶118, 120).
• Asserted Claims: At least independent Claim 1 is asserted (Compl. ¶164).
• Accused Features: The complaint alleges that Defendant’s web chat system infringes by facilitating communication between a single responder and multiple users utilizing different communication protocols (Compl. ¶¶120, 164).

III. The Accused Instrumentality

• Product Identification: The accused instrumentality is Defendant Liveadmins LLC' web chat services and the underlying system that supports them (Compl. ¶¶139, 147, 155, 163).
• Functionality and Market Context: The complaint does not provide specific technical details about the operation of the Liveadmins LLC system. It generally alleges that the accused instrumentality provides functionality for real-time, web-based communication that embodies the inventions claimed in the patents-in-suit (Compl. ¶¶140, 148, 156, 164). The complaint alleges that Defendant has derived substantial revenues from these allegedly infringing acts (Compl. ¶6).

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

The complaint incorporates by reference claim chart exhibits (Exhibits E, F, G, H) that were not included with the filed complaint document (Compl. ¶¶140, 148, 156, 164). The infringement theory is therefore based on the narrative allegations in the infringement counts.

For each of the four patents-in-suit, the complaint alleges that Liveadmins LLC’ accused instrumentality infringes at least Claim 1 (Compl. ¶¶140, 148, 156, 164). The core of the infringement theory is that the Liveadmins LLC web chat service is a system that practices the claimed methods for managing real-time communications. This includes allegedly receiving requests from unauthenticated website users, routing communications to and from one or more responders (who may be human agents or bots), and managing conversation state, including handoffs between different responders and persistence across web pages, all while using an intermediary architecture that separates the user's protocol (web browser) from the responders' protocols (e.g., a proprietary agent dashboard or other RTC client).

• Identified Points of Contention:
  • Scope Questions: A central question may be whether the sequence of events in a typical Liveadmins LLC chat session maps to the specific, ordered steps of the asserted claims. For example, for the ’183 Patent, does a conversation with a first agent "end" before a "second responder" is identified, or do modern systems use a more fluid transfer or conferencing mechanism that may not align with the claim language?
  • Technical Questions: For the ’597 and ’787 Patents, a key question will be how the Liveadmins LLC system "identifies" a second responder or "stores" a conversation in a "persistent data store." The evidence required to prove these specific technical operations, as opposed to merely observing a chat transfer or a reloading conversation from the user's perspective, may be a point of dispute.

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

Analysis based on the lead ’183 Patent.

• The Term: "unauthenticated user" (Claim 1)

• Context and Importance: This term is fundamental to the patent's premise of allowing a user to initiate a chat without logging in or providing identifying information. Its construction will be critical to determining infringement, as nearly all public-facing web chat services operate this way. Practitioners may focus on this term because its scope—whether it simply means "not logged in" or carries a more specific technical meaning of lacking a session token or other specific credentials—will define the baseline for infringement.

• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:

  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The specification suggests a broad meaning, contrasting the invention with prior art that required knowing a recipient's address or identity, and notes that the "initiator may remain anonymous to both the system and the responders" (’183 Patent, col. 3:25-29). This supports a simple "not identified" interpretation.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The detailed description mentions that "it is also possible that the initiator can begin their inquiry without being required to enter any identifying or qualifying information whatsoever" (’183 Patent, col. 5:32-35). A defendant might argue that the term implies a complete lack of any user-identifying data, which could be challenged if the accused system uses cookies or other session-tracking mechanisms.

• The Term: "identify, based on the first communication, a second responder, wherein the second responder is different from the first responder" (Claim 1)

• Context and Importance: This limitation describes the "handoff" function. The dispute will likely center on what it means to "identify" the second responder "based on the first communication." This could mean the content of the user's message triggers the transfer, or it could mean the transfer is based on the context of the conversation which includes that first communication.

• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:

  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The specification describes using "word-choice in the communication, meta-data describing the conversation topics, geographic location, RTC protocol preferences, past communications, etc." to select responders (’183 Patent, col. 5:1-4). This supports a broad interpretation where any data related to the conversation can be used for the identification and transfer.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The claim language "based on the first communication" could be argued to require a direct causal link between the user's specific message and the identification of the second responder, as opposed to a manual transfer by the first agent or a system-level routing decision based on agent availability. The complaint itself gives the example of an unconventional technical solution as "seamlessly transferring the conversation to a second responder" (Compl. ¶48), which suggests the mechanism is a key part of the invention.

VI. Other Allegations

• Indirect Infringement: The complaint alleges both contributory and induced infringement for all four patents. It alleges that Liveadmins LLC contributes by providing an instrumentality whose infringing aspects are not staple articles of commerce suitable for substantial non-infringing uses (e.g., Compl. ¶142, ¶150). It alleges inducement based on knowledge of the patents and acts that would "aid and abet and induce infringement by customers, clients, partners, developers and end users" (e.g., Compl. ¶143, ¶151).
• Willful Infringement: Willfulness is alleged for all four patents. The complaint asserts that Liveadmins LLC "has acted with disregard of Disintermediation's patent rights, without any reasonable basis for doing so, and has willfully infringed" the patents (e.g., Compl. ¶145, ¶153, ¶161, ¶169). The complaint does not specify whether this is based on pre-suit or post-suit knowledge.

VII. Analyst’s Conclusion: Key Questions for the Case

1. A central issue will be one of architectural mapping: Does the operational sequence of the accused Liveadmins LLC chat platform, particularly regarding agent handoffs and conversation persistence, align with the specific, multi-step processes recited in the independent claims, or does it employ a different, non-infringing architecture to achieve a similar user-facing result?
2. A key evidentiary question will concern claim scope: Can the term "unauthenticated user" be construed broadly to cover any user who has not logged in via a username/password, even if tracked by cookies or session identifiers, and does the "identify... a second responder" limitation require an automated, content-based routing decision as opposed to a manual agent transfer?
3. Given the shared specification and continuation status of the patents, a significant question for damages and validity will be patent differentiation: What distinct, patentable contribution does each subsequent patent provide over the others, and how does the accused system separately and distinctly infringe the unique limitations of each asserted patent?