HEAVY.COM - June 24 - Nabil Ghaly is an engineer, an inventor, and a business owner. He is also the plaintiff in a case which charges that Humor Rainbow, the parent company of OkCupid, illegally used technology that he had patented over 15 years ago. Ghaly says that he sent repeated letters to Humor Rainbow to alert them to the fact that he had already patented the technology. He asked them to sign a licensing agreement but, he says, they declined. That's when Ghaly decided to bring the matter to court. Ghaly's patent infringement case opened on June 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Ghaly filed for a patent for a hand-held matchmaking device in 1999. His system would ask participants multiple choice questions in order to create a profile. The device would store that information and then use it to determine whether participants were compatible with each other. Ghaly charges that back in 1999, this was a brand new idea and that he deserves credit for his prescience. His complaint charges that OkCupid didn't file for a patent for a mobile dating app until 2013 (that patent was granted in 2017). It's not clear whether Ghaly also intends to go after other dating apps for patent violation. Humor Rainbow settled a previous patent violation lawsuit from the parent company of JDate. The patent describes a computerized system for deciding whether two people are interested in each other. Under the system, the two people are notified if they are mutually interested in each other.
by Kate Prengel
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