New York Times - AdvanceMe Patent Invalidated - Extra, Extra Read All About It

The news about the AdvanceMe patent invalidation has spread like crazy (Including internationally).

I thought the way all the prior art was gathered was a unique story and apparently the New York Times did as well. You can see the article written entitled Playing Detective In A Patent Case.

In addition, the Electronic Transaction Association (ETA), the leading industry association of the credit card processing industry has a link right off their "latest news" section of their homepage entitled, AdvanceMe Patent Ruled Invalid.

The Wall Street Journal wrote about the AdvanceMe patent invalidation and referenced the NY Times article specifically how myself, David Goldin, President & CEO of AmeriMerchant was instrumental in invalidating the patent.

The story was also the cover story of ISO & Agent Weekly. A link to the article can be found here.

Prepaid Trends (page 8 of this issue) talks about how the US District Court ruled the AdvanceMe Patent invalid and I am quoted in the article saying, "If AdvanceMe had won, it would have had a legal monopoly on a patent that was not a novel idea."

It has even hit the international press. The International Tribune published a story about how the prior art was found to invalidate the AdvanceMe patent.

Payments News mentions the New York Times article today.

The intellectual property legal community has even given the Merchant Cash Advance Blog credit in assisting the invalidation of the AdvanceMe Patent. The 271 Patent Blog recently ran a story about this case.

And speaking of the intellectual property community, Vinson & Elkins, our attorneys in this litigation have posted a news release about this case. I also wanted to take the time to thank the team at Vinson & Elkins for their extraordinary work they have done on this case. We couldn't have chosen a better IP firm to handle this matter in the Eastern District of Texas. My hat goes off to Bill Schuurman, Brian Buss, Joey Gray, Floyd Walker, Hilary Preston and Graham Sutliff for their work to invalidate this patent (And for their patience of putting up with a lot of smoke and mirrors thrown to us by the other side and their attorneys). If any one of you are lucky enough to be sued like I was over patent infringment (or if you are the holder of a legitimate patent that you are looking to enforce), I couldn't recommend Vinson & Elkins highly enough for all they have done not only for my company, but the entire merchant cash advance and credit card processing industry.

If you need to choose local counsel for the Eastern District of Texas, Potter Minton was our firm and my thanks go out to Doug McSwane and his team.

I have to give a very special thanks to Jeff Sanders of Roberts & Ritholtz. Jeff was not only instrumental in helping the defendants choose Vinson & Elkins as national counsel and Potter Mitton as local counsel, but provided strategy that was second to none throughout the case.

I also want to thank everyone that came to trial, namely Tim Litle, Larry Bouchard, Lee Suckow, Skip Landon as well as everyone that provided testimony in the case including the former AdvanceMe employees.

And finally, a very special thanks to those not named above that made it possible for me to be able to fight this fight, you know who you are and thank you.