ForeSee settles Lodsys patent dispute

The “omnibus litigation settlement”, announced this week, resolves “all outstanding litigation claims between ForeSee and Lodsys and terminates all pending litigation with Lodsys related to ForeSee’s products and services”, according to a statement. Settlement terms were not disclosed.

Lodsys sued ForeSee in July, along with several other companies including online customer feedback firm OpinionLab, accusing them of infringing on patents it holds that broadly cover “systems and methods for providers of products and/or services to interact with users of those products and services to gather information from those users and transmit that information to the provider”, according to Lodsys’s website.

ForeSee and OpinionLab took action in advance of Lodsys’s complaint, both separately going to court in June to seek declaratory judgements that neither company infringed on Lodsys’s patents and that the patents themselves were invalid. ForeSee’s software recruits website visitors to answer customer satisfaction questionnaires, while OpinionLab places feedback links on websites and adverts – usually in the form of ‘[+] Feedback’. When clicked, these links open up a window where people can rate and comment on a site.

The OpinionLab/Lodsys civil actions were dismissed with prejudice on 18 October and 15 November.