Ecommerce technology company Shopify has moved forward in a federal court case brought by DKR Consulting, which asserted that Shopify violated copyrights related to ecommerce shopping buttons and social media.
DKR filed a lawsuit, DKR Consulting LLC v. Shopify Inc., last August in the US District Court for the Central District of California.
Shopify says the technology features are not copyrighted
Shopify argued that its use of parts of the technology in question included general ecommerce practices that were unpatentable and asked for the case to be dismissed in March. Judge Hernán D. Vera agreed and dismissed the case on Aug. 1.
Gregory H. Lantier, an attorney representing Shopify at the law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, argued in court documents that the patents in question referred to ordinary business practices online and are not subject to patent law.
“The four patents cited in this case (collectively, “Buy Key Rights”) are nothing more than a vague idea of using common computer technology, such as servers and widgets online to integrate ads and order forms,” Lantier said. As the Federal Circuit has repeatedly noted, this computerized version of a well-known business method is not patentable.
The roots of DKR’s lawsuit grew out of its concerns that Shopify worked from 2011 to 2015 with DIY Media Inc., which previously owned the said copyrights before DKR acquired them. . (DIY Media is not involved in the DKR lawsuit.)
DKR claims that Shopify has unfairly abused social media practices
DKR said that Shopify has benefited from DIY Media’s approach to using ecommerce widgets in ways designed, in part, to “use social media marketing techniques to drive sales…
But Judge Vera agreed with Shopify’s argument that such practices were outside the scope of the patent.
“The court concludes that the claims at issue here are based on an absurd concept—specifically, that of combining an order form with a product advertisement, through the use of conventional computer technology,” Judge Vera wrote in the book. his Order Granting Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. . “While copyright claims improve the effectiveness of web widgets in spreading content and enabling marketers to use social media to attract customers, the idea of developing web widgets rang does not provide an advance in computing. On the contrary, the charges at issue here use conventional computer technology as a tool to facilitate business transactions.”
Shopify has a wide reach in ecommerce
In May, Shopify filed a lawsuit against Shopline Commerce Pte. Ltd and Shopline US Inc., say they have created a copycat version of Dawn, a Shopify tool used to create ecommerce storefront templates. That case is pending in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Shopify’s ecommerce technology, including its Shopify Plus platform, is widely used by retail and B2B companies, such as industrial paint equipment manufacturer Pittsburgh Spray Equipment Co.
In North America, 117 of the Top 1000 online retailers use Shopify as their ecommerce platform. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of the largest online retailers in the region by annual online sales. By 2023, those 117 online retailers combined for more than $9.72 billion in online sales.
Shopify did not immediately return a request for comment. Attorneys for DKR Consulting also did not immediately return requests for comment.
Paul Demery is a contributing editor for Digital Commerce 360 covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. [email protected].
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