Monster Media has filed a claim against the Boston-based software firm Aerva, in the New York Southern District Court, alleging willful patent infringement.
Monster is asserting a patent for retrieving and then displaying social media content on screens. The patent was acquired by Monster when it acquired Locamoda.
My guess is this is not the last such claim Monster may make against other software companies, as MANY CMS platforms grab and display content based on hash tags.
This is wildly different from the patent troll business the industry has seen. Locamoda was doing social media display to screens before people started calling it social media, via things like wifitti.
Display social media on screens is quite common across networks, and I don’t know the intricacies of the patent and method to say whether the Monster/Locamoda patent is broad, or sufficiently well-defined that only some companies are infringing in some way.