IBM has sued Priceline Group over allegedly infringing four of its patents used on websites of its travel and dining subsidiaries.
The tech firm claims that the online travel firm, together with its subsidiaries Kayak and restaurant-reservation tool Opentable, is using its patented technologies without giving any royalties.
IBM noted in its complaint: "Despite IBM’s repeated demands, Priceline refuses to negotiate a license. This lawsuit seeks to stop Priceline from continuing to use IBM’s intellectual property without authorisation."
Two of the IBM patents were from the late 1990s, with one of them tracking earlier conversations with a user and the other related to speeding up Internet transmissions.
The third patent, which was issued in 2006, involves a process of displaying internet advertising, with the last one from 2009 improving single sign-on.
Despite amassing most US patents for 22 consecutive years, the tech major has been hit with declining sales for three straight years as its new cloud and data analytic offerings have not been able to shore up its revenue lost from divestitures and sluggish hardware and services’ demand.
