Roku, Samsung Sued on Tech That Targets Ads to Specific Viewers

Roku Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. allegedly infringe patented data analysis techniques that let advertisers deliver messages to smart-device users based on their individual viewing or listening habits, a pair of inventors claimed in lawsuits filed Friday in two different Texas federal courthouses.

Roku and Samsung both sell advertising that leverages automatic content recognition, or ACR, to harvest and analyze viewers’ digital “fingerprints.” These captured snippets of what users watch or listen to, when they do it, and for how long are scrubbed and compared to libraries of similar digital images so that advertisers can tailor ads to individual viewers’ ...