Back in August, Phoenix Licensing filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, asserting its automated financial services marketing patents against more than three dozen insurers and financial companies, including Allstate, Prudential, Barclays, New York Life Insurance Co., PNC Bank, Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, KeyCorp and Bank of America. Phoenix Licensing LLP et al v. The Allstate Corp. et al, case number 2:09-cv-00255-TJW.
The complaint claims that the defendants infringe two of its patents relating to marketing and sales of financial products:
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U.S. Patent Number 5,987,434, entitled “Apparatus and method for transacting marketing and sales of financial products,” which recites electronically collecting clients’ information and automatically selecting and presenting financial products appropriate for that client. See, e.g., independent claim 2:
2. A method for using client information about clients comprising a plurality of client records to automatically select and present financial products appropriate for the clients, the method comprising:
automatically inputting into a computer-accessible storage medium the client information including the plurality of client records without human intervention between input of the respective client records, inputting information about the financial products, and inputting decision criteria pertaining to selection from among the financial products;
using a central processing unit in communication with the storage medium to select a subset of the financial products for each of the clients appropriate for that client using the client information, the financial products information, and the decision criteria; and
using an output device to prepare a client communication for each of the clients which identifies the subset of the financial products appropriate for that client.
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U.S. Patent Number 6,999,938, entitled “Automated reply generation direct marketing system”, which recites creating automatically generated customized replies in response to communications from customers and delivering them to the customers. See, e.g., independent claim 1:
1. A method for automatically preparing customized replies to responses from one or more consumer entities, the method comprising:
receiving one or more responses from one or more consumer entities, said responses comprising nonpurchase requests and being in response to mass marketing communications relating to offerings for one or more financial products or services being offered as part of a mass marketing campaign;
automatically generating one or more replies, each of said replies being generated prior to receipt from a consumer entity of a purchase commitment of said one or more financial products or services being offered as part of said mass marketing campaign, each reply customized for a consumer entity using other than one or more of name, address and account number of said consumer entity, and responsive to a nonpurchase request received from said consumer entity, each of said replies specific to one of said responses or a subsequent response; and
delivering said replies to corresponding consumer entities.
In their Answers, the defendants of course asserted non-infringement and invalidity. However, with the claims as broad as they are, the interesting part of the dispute – if it gets that far – may focus on the prior art. On the other hand, the patents’ priority date goes back to 1996.
Back in 2007, Phoenix Licensing threatened legal action with the same two patents against State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance. State Farm sued Phoenix, seeking declaratory judgment of noninfringement and invalidity of the patents.