Starbucks Slams Geofence Patent Owner That Sued Over Mobile App

Starbucks Corp. is pushing back against a patent infringement lawsuit, arguing that the plaintiff failed to conduct a proper investigation before filing suit in an East Texas federal court.

The coffee giant said Nostromo LLC’s evidence of infringement was minimal, relying heavily on a blog post about Starbucks’ use of geofencing user location technology. That post was based on an October 2010 news article about a Starbucks program in the United Kingdom, but Nostromo’s US Patent No. 8,559,970 wasn’t issued until three years later.

Starbucks contends its mobile app operates differently from the patented technology. The company noted that while ...