Joto Inc v. Ticketcentercom

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: Joto Inc. (Delaware)
  • Defendant: TicketCenter.com (British Virgin Islands)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Rabicoff Law LLC
• Case Identification: 2:25-cv-00755, E.D. Tex., 08/01/2025
• Venue Allegations: Venue is asserted based on Defendant being a foreign corporation, which may be sued in any judicial district. The complaint also alleges Defendant committed acts of infringement and caused harm within the Eastern District of Texas.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s online event recommendation system infringes a patent related to methods for matching users to events based on a contextual analysis of user, social, and event data.
• Technical Context: The technology operates in the domain of social networking and online recommendation engines, which aim to provide users with personalized content to overcome information overload and promote real-world interactions.
• Key Procedural History: The complaint does not reference any prior litigation, inter partes review proceedings, or licensing history related to the patent-in-suit. The patent claims priority from a 2013 provisional application.

Case Timeline

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

• Patent Identification: U.S. Patent No. 9,639,608, “Comprehensive user/event matching or recommendations based on awareness of entities, activities, interests, desires, location,” issued May 2, 2017.

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent describes a problem in social networking where users are "inundated with advertisements for products unrelated to the context of what the members are currently viewing," a phenomenon referred to as "ad blindness" (’608 Patent, col. 1:40-46). Existing methods for indicating user interests are described as producing "non-useful and non-meaningful data for real-world (offline) interactions" (’608 Patent, col. 1:52-55).
• The Patented Solution: The invention is a recommendation engine that creates a "real-world social network" by connecting users with events and other people based on a more nuanced analysis of their interests and behaviors (’608 Patent, col. 1:61-66). The system ingests various data types (user, event, social), including data from non-subscribed "ghost users," and processes them through a multi-step analysis to generate and rank recommendations (’608 Patent, FIG. 1; col. 4:22-34). The goal is to promote "meaningful interactions based on the context of their interests and behavior" (’608 Patent, col. 1:65-col. 2:1).
• Technical Importance: The described system aims to improve upon standard recommendation algorithms by creating a deeper contextual model of user interests, including those of a user's wider social circle, to foster offline activities (’608 Patent, col. 2:11-13).

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts infringement of the ’608 Patent generally, referencing "Exemplary '608 Patent Claims" in an attached exhibit (Compl. ¶11). Independent claim 1 is foundational.
• Independent Claim 1 requires a method with the following essential elements:
  • Receiving or collecting user, event, or social data by a network environment.
  • Identifying one or more portions of that data.
  • Determining recommendations by calculating a "relevancy score" for the data, where the determination is based on a "significance analysis" that ranks the data's interest to users.
  • The calculated relevancy score must be greater than a threshold.
  • Categorizing the recommendations by applying a "relevancy popularity analysis" to narrow down the data.
  • Matching the identified data based on the relevancy score.
  • Determining one or more recommendation results from the matching.
  • Transmitting the recommendation results to the user for display.
• The complaint does not explicitly reserve the right to assert dependent claims, but its general allegations suggest this possibility.

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

The accused instrumentalities are identified as the "Exemplary Defendant Products" of TicketCenter.com (Compl. ¶11). Based on the defendant's name, these are understood to be the TicketCenter.com website and any associated mobile applications or services (Compl. ¶3).

Functionality and Market Context

The complaint alleges that the Defendant's products "practice the technology claimed by the '608 Patent" (Compl. ¶16). This suggests the accused functionality involves the systems and algorithms TicketCenter.com uses to recommend events to its users. The complaint does not provide specific details on how the accused products operate or their market positioning, instead incorporating these details by reference to an external exhibit not included with the filing (Compl. ¶17).

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint alleges that the Defendant's products infringe the ’608 Patent by practicing the claimed technology (Compl. ¶16). Specific, element-by-element infringement allegations are contained in claim charts in "Exhibit 2" to the complaint, which was not publicly filed with the initial pleading (Compl. ¶17). Without access to these charts, a detailed analysis of the infringement theory is not possible. The narrative of the complaint asserts that the Defendant's products "satisfy all elements of the Exemplary '608 Patent Claims" (Compl. ¶16).

No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

• The Term: "relevancy score"

  • Context and Importance: This term is central to the core step of "determining recommendations" in claim 1. The infringement analysis will depend on whether the defendant's system calculates a score that meets the specific requirements of the patent, or a more generic one. Practitioners may focus on this term because its definition appears to be tied to the subsequent "significance analysis" limitation.
  • Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
    • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The term itself is generic. A party could argue that any numerical value used to rank recommendations meets this limitation in its plain and ordinary meaning.
    • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: Claim 1 links the calculation of the score to a "significance analysis" which "ranks said user data, said event data, or said social data to be of interest to one or more users based on awareness of entities, activities, interests, desires, or location" (’608 Patent, col. 10:23-30). This suggests the "relevancy score" is not just any score, but one derived from this specific, multi-faceted analysis. The specification further details this analysis, including factors like "user location, significance to each of the users of the overlapping interests," and other thresholds (’608 Patent, col. 5:58-62).

• The Term: "ghost users' real world interests"

  • Context and Importance: This term appears in dependent claim 3 and is a unique concept described in the patent. Its construction is important for determining the scope of infringement for claims that rely on data from non-subscribed individuals. The dispute will likely question whether Defendant's system considers data from non-users and, if so, whether it maps to "real world interests."
  • Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
    • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: A party might argue this covers any inference about the interests of non-users, such as friends of a primary user mentioned in a social media post or contact list.
    • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The specification describes "ghost user 103a" as "a friend who has not subscribed or directly provided information to network environment 104, but whose data was obtained because of user 103's engagement with the network environment 104 or social data provider 105" (’608 Patent, col. 4:30-36). The patent further explains a process where "ghost profiles 103a" are generated from a subscribed user's social data (’608 Patent, col. 7:36-38). This may support a narrower construction requiring an affirmative creation of a non-user profile based on a subscribed user's data.

VI. Other Allegations

• Indirect Infringement: The complaint alleges induced infringement, stating that Defendant distributes "product literature and website materials inducing end users and others to use its products in the customary and intended manner that infringes the '608 Patent" (Compl. ¶14).
• Willful Infringement: Willfulness is alleged based on knowledge obtained via the service of the complaint itself. The complaint states, "At least since being served by this Complaint... Defendant has actively, knowingly, and intentionally continued to induce infringement" (Compl. ¶15).

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

1. A core issue will be one of definitional scope: Can the patent's highly specific claim terms, such as a "relevancy score" derived from a "significance analysis" and a "relevancy popularity analysis," be construed to read on the potentially more conventional recommendation algorithms of a commercial ticketing website? The viability of the infringement case may depend on whether these terms are interpreted broadly or are limited to the particular multi-step process detailed in the specification.

2. A second central issue will be one of technical proof: What evidence can Plaintiff provide to demonstrate that the TicketCenter.com system actually performs each discrete step of the claimed method? Given the complexity of the claimed process, which includes categorizing, matching, and analyzing data based on layered criteria, Plaintiff will face the challenge of showing, with technical evidence, that the accused system's internal operations map to the patent's specific architecture, rather than just achieving a similar outcome.