DCT
7:25-cv-00189
Adaptive Avenue Associates Inc v. Walmart Inc
I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information
- Parties & Counsel:
- Plaintiff: Adaptive Avenue Associates, Inc. (Minnesota)
- Defendant: Walmart Inc. (Delaware)
- Plaintiff’s Counsel: Direction IP Law; Padmanabhan & Dawson, P.L.L.C.
- Case Identification: 7:25-cv-00189, W.D. Tex., 04/21/2025
- Venue Allegations: Plaintiff alleges venue is proper in the Western District of Texas based on Defendant’s regular and established places of business within the district, including a large distribution facility and multiple retail stores, as well as business transacted through the accused "www.walmart.com" website, which is accessible to users in the district.
- Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s "www.walmart.com" website, specifically its use of "carousel ads," infringes two patents related to systems and methods for creating and displaying automated, sequential presentations of web content.
- Technical Context: The technology concerns server-side systems for automatically presenting a series of web pages or content snippets in a slideshow format, a feature now commonly used in e-commerce for advertising and product showcases.
- Key Procedural History: The complaint notes that U.S. Patent No. 7,428,707 is a continuation-in-part of the application that issued as U.S. Patent No. 7,171,629. It also references the prosecution history of the ’707 patent, stating the patent examiner found the claims allowable over prior art that required manual composition of slideshows.
Case Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2000-10-20 | Earliest Priority Date ('629 & '707 Patents) |
| 2007-01-30 | '629 Patent Issued |
| 2008-09-23 | '707 Patent Issued |
| ~2015-01-01 | Alleged Infringing Uses "Skyrocketed" |
| 2019-04-18 | Date of Accused Product Screenshots in Complaint |
| 2025-04-21 | Complaint Filing Date |
II. Technology and Patent(s)-in-Suit Analysis
U.S. Patent No. 7,171,629 - Customizable Web Site Access System And Method Therefore (Issued Jan. 30, 2007)
The Invention Explained
- Problem Addressed: The patent describes prior art web navigation as inefficient and "tedious," requiring users to manually click through search results or links to view a sequence of pages. For site owners, creating automated presentations was complex and expensive, often requiring site reprogramming or specialized development tools (’629 Patent, col. 7:49-67; Compl. ¶13).
- The Patented Solution: The invention is a server-side system featuring a "composer" and a "performer" operating on a host server. A site developer or user interacts with the composer to create a "presentation"—defined by a list of URLs, a display sequence, and a display duration. The performer component then automatically displays this sequence of web pages to an end-user in a "slide show format," eliminating the need for repetitive clicking (’629 Patent, Abstract; FIG. 1).
- Technical Importance: The system aimed to increase user engagement by transforming the "passive site and active visitor" model into an "active site and active visitor" model, thereby guiding users through content more efficiently and encouraging them to "stay longer, absorb more information, and return more quickly" (’629 Patent, col. 13:35-40; Compl. ¶35).
Key Claims at a Glance
- The complaint asserts independent method claim 11 (Compl. ¶47). The phrasing "including but not limited to" suggests the potential assertion of other claims.
- Essential Elements of Claim 11:
- Remotely invoking a "composer" operating on a host server.
- Creating a "presentation" in the composer, which includes the steps of:
- Establishing a list of URLs using manual entry or a query-based system.
- Determining a display sequence for the list of URLs.
- Determining a display duration for the list of URLs.
- Remotely invoking a "performer" operating on the host server to present the created presentation.
- Automatically and locally displaying the presentation in a "slide show format", where each URL is a slide displayed for its pre-determined duration without human intervention.
U.S. Patent No. 7,428,707 - Customizable Web Site Access System And Method Therefore (Issued Sep. 23, 2008)
The Invention Explained
- Problem Addressed: As a continuation-in-part of the ’629 Patent, the ’707 Patent addresses the same general problem of inefficient web navigation. It specifically targets the manual effort required to create presentations, noting that prior art slideshows were composed manually and stored in static files (’707 Patent, col. 1:49-67; Compl. ¶44).
- The Patented Solution: The invention adds a method for "auto-composing" a web slideshow. Instead of requiring a developer to manually input a list of URLs, the system can automatically compose the presentation by "automatic extraction of web page details from a desired web page." These details can include hyperlinks, a separate "presentation/rendition text file," or a special meta tag found on the page (’707 Patent, Abstract; Compl. ¶43).
- Technical Importance: This innovation streamlined the content creation process by allowing presentations to be generated dynamically from the content of an existing web page, a feature the patent examiner allegedly found to be unconventional over the prior art (Compl. ¶44).
Key Claims at a Glance
- The complaint asserts independent system claim 1 and independent method claim 7 (Compl. ¶65). The phrasing "including but not limited to" suggests the potential assertion of other claims.
- Essential Elements of Claim 7:
- Composing a presentation for a "desired web page" by creating a list of URLs.
- This composing step includes "automatically extracting" a plurality of "hyperlinks" from the desired web page, which provide the URLs.
- Automatically displaying the presentation in the order of the created list of URLs.
III. The Accused Instrumentality
Product Identification
- The "www.walmart.com" website and, more specifically, the "carousel ads" featured on it (Compl. ¶¶47, 50).
Functionality and Market Context
- The complaint alleges that the Accused Instrumentalities are rotating promotional displays on the Walmart homepage that automatically cycle through a series of "panels" or "slides" (Compl. ¶¶50, 53). A screenshot provided in the complaint shows a multi-panel carousel on the Walmart homepage featuring different product promotions, such as "Easter must-haves" and "Apple Watch Series 3" (Compl. ¶52, p. 16). The complaint asserts that such carousel ads are an industry standard that generate significantly higher click-through rates and a lower cost-per-conversion than static advertisements (Compl. ¶45).
IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations
’629 Patent Infringement Allegations
| Claim Element (from Independent Claim 11) | Alleged Infringing Functionality | Complaint Citation | Patent Citation |
|---|---|---|---|
| remotely invoking a composer operating on a host server; | Defendant's host server is invoked when a user navigates to "www.walmart.com", triggering code that assembles the carousel content. | ¶51 | col. 14:10-14 |
| creating a presentation in said composer, wherein said step of creating comprises the steps of: establishing a list of URLs in said composer by one of a plurality of list establishment methodologies... | Defendant creates the presentation (the carousel) by establishing a list of URLs for the different panels, either manually or through an automated, query-based system. | ¶53, ¶54 | col. 14:15-25 |
| determining a display sequence of said list of URLs in said composer; | Defendant determines the specific order in which the promotional panels are displayed in the carousel. | ¶55 | col. 14:26-28 |
| determining a duration of display for said list of URLs in said composer; | Each slide is displayed for a determined duration before the next slide appears automatically. | ¶56 | col. 14:29-31 |
| remotely invoking a performer operating on said host server to present said created presentation; and | A performer is invoked when a user navigates to the website, causing the pre-configured carousel to be presented. | ¶57, ¶58 | col. 14:32-34 |
| automatically locally displaying the created presentation...in a slide show format... | The carousel is automatically displayed to the user as a slideshow, with each panel representing a slide. A screenshot displays one such panel and its underlying source code (Compl. ¶52, p. 16). | ¶59 | col. 14:35-44 |
’707 Patent Infringement Allegations
| Claim Element (from Independent Claim 7) | Alleged Infringing Functionality | Complaint Citation | Patent Citation |
|---|---|---|---|
| composing a presentation for a desired web page by creating a list of URLs, | Defendant composes a presentation for the "www.walmart.com" page by creating a list of URLs for the carousel slides. A second screenshot shows the next slide in the sequence, for the Apple Watch (Compl. ¶52, p. 17). | ¶70, ¶72 | col. 10:17-19 |
| wherein said step of composing comprises automatically extracting a plurality of hyperlinks from the desired web page, wherein the plurality of hyperlinks provides the URLs; | The system automatically "extracts" the image URLs for the carousel panels from the "www.walmart.com" page itself. The complaint identifies the image URLs in the source code as the "plurality of hyperlinks" (Compl. ¶71, ¶73, ¶74). | ¶73, ¶74 | col. 10:20-23 |
| automatically displaying said presentation, wherein said presentation is presented in order of the created list of URLs. | The carousel presentation is automatically displayed to the user in the order of the created list of URLs. | ¶75 | col. 10:27-30 |
Identified Points of Contention
- Scope Questions: A central question for the ’629 Patent may be whether Walmart's integrated, back-end ad-serving system constitutes a "composer" and "performer" as described in the patent, which depicts them as distinct components interacting with a developer or user (e.g., ’629 Patent, FIG. 1, FIG. 2A).
- Technical Questions: For the ’707 Patent, a key dispute may arise over the meaning of "automatically extracting a plurality of hyperlinks from the desired web page." The complaint alleges the system extracts image URLs for a component on the page itself. The defense may argue that this claim limitation requires parsing a page to find links pointing to other, separate web pages (e.g., to create a tour from search results), creating a potential mismatch with the accused functionality.
V. Key Claim Terms for Construction
The Term: "composer" (’629 Patent, Claim 11)
- Context and Importance: The definition of "composer" is critical because the infringement theory rests on Walmart's back-end system performing the functions of the claimed composer. Practitioners may focus on this term to dispute whether an automated content-serving logic, which is not a discrete user-facing tool, falls within the claim's scope.
- Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
- Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The claim itself defines the composer functionally as a component that "create[s] a presentation by accepting a list of a plurality of URLs, a desired sequence...and a pre-set display duration" (’629 Patent, col. 14:2-7). This functional language may support an interpretation that covers any system performing these steps.
- Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The specification repeatedly describes the composer as a tool used by a "site owner/developer" to manually input settings via a user interface, as depicted in the flow chart of FIG. 2A and the data entry screen of FIG. 3 (’629 Patent, col. 9:43-47; FIGs. 2A, 3). This suggests a more interactive, tool-like embodiment rather than a fully automated background process.
The Term: "automatically extracting a plurality of hyperlinks from the desired web page" (’707 Patent, Claim 7)
- Context and Importance: This term is the central inventive concept alleged to be practiced for the ’707 patent. The viability of the infringement claim will depend on whether the accused functionality of loading image source URLs for an on-page carousel meets this definition.
- Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
- Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The term "hyperlink" is not explicitly defined. Plaintiff may argue it broadly covers any URI, including an
<img>tag'ssrcattribute, and that "extracting" simply means programmatically retrieving that URI from the page's code. - Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The patent's examples of "item navigation" show extracting links from a search results page to create a tour of other web sites (’629 Patent, col. 12:55-13:14; FIGs. 9-11, which are incorporated by reference into the '707 patent). This context suggests "extracting hyperlinks" is meant to build a presentation of separate, external pages, not to populate a component with its own on-page assets.
- Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The term "hyperlink" is not explicitly defined. Plaintiff may argue it broadly covers any URI, including an
VI. Other Allegations
- Indirect Infringement: The complaint does not plead separate counts for indirect infringement (inducement or contributory). It does, however, allege direct infringement by Defendant and "other actors under the Defendant's direction or control," which may set up a direct infringement argument under a theory of divided infringement (Compl. ¶¶50, 51, 53-57, 69-70, 73, 75).
- Willful Infringement: The complaint does not contain allegations of pre- or post-suit knowledge of the patents, nor does it include a claim for willful infringement or a prayer for enhanced damages.
VII. Analyst’s Conclusion: Key Questions for the Case
- A core issue will be one of definitional scope: Can the term "composer," described in the specification as an interactive tool for developers, be construed to read on the automated, server-side logic of Walmart's modern e-commerce platform? The outcome of this construction may determine the viability of the infringement allegations for the ’629 Patent.
- A key evidentiary question will be one of technical and functional meaning: Does the accused system's process of loading image URLs to populate its own on-page carousel constitute "automatically extracting...hyperlinks from the desired web page" as required by the ’707 Patent? The case may turn on whether this claim language requires the extraction of links pointing to separate web pages, as shown in the patent's "item navigation" examples.