MLBAM President Bob Bowman’s “Ticketing” Patent Challenged for Validity

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Sept. 20, 2015 - PRLog -- MLBAM’s “ticketing patent” is being challenged for validity in an Inter Partes Review (IPR) petition filed with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on September 18, 2015. The IPR is a trial proceeding conducted at the USPTO’s Patent Trials and Appeal Board (PTAB) to review the patentability of one or more claims of a patent.

U.S. Patent No. 8,121,872 “System and Method for Allocating Seats for a Ticketed Event” was originally granted to MLBAM on February 21, 2012.  The alleged inventors of the MLBAM patent are Robert “Bob” Bowman, President and CEO of MLBAM, and Heather Benz and Mark Plutzer.  Heather Benz and Mark Plutzer are VP’s of Ticketing at MLBAM.

The Bowman patent attempts to claim various methods and systems for selecting and allocating seats for a ticketed event, such as a sporting event (e.g., baseball, basketball, football, hockey, auto racing), a concert, movie, theatrical performance, etc.  MLBAM currently offers online ticketing through Tickets.com, which is a global company that sells tickets for events, and is also owned by MLBAM.

The IPR proceeding will elicit proof demonstrating that MLBAM and its President Bob Bowman did not invent anything new before they filed their patent application, and, in fact, electronic and online ticketing had been well-known for years previously.

This is the second MLBAM patent being challenged for validity.  This comes at a time when MLBAM has announced plans to spin out “BAM Tech” to manage all non-baseball ventures.

Front Row Technologies, LLC ("Front Row") was founded in 2000 with the idea of overcoming the limited viewing opportunities available then to audiences of live activities.  Front Row's intellectual property has since matured and captures the technological innovations that now solve the shortcomings previously experienced in the broadcast and receipt of video content to remote hand held devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptop computers, etc) from live activities taking place at sports stadiums and entertainment venues.