Beleaguered Australian streaming service Guvera files patent infringement lawsuit against Spotify

Guvera, the now-defunct Australian-based streaming service, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Spotify due to its contextual advertising function.

Despite ceasing operations as a streaming platform in 2017, Guvera continues to exist in a limited capacity, with Digital Music News recently obtaining a copy of the patent infringement lawsuit served against Spotify in a New York federal court from last week.

The complaint, which can be read in full here, is based around Patent no. 8,977,633 titled ‘System and method for generating a pool of matched content’, which was initially filed for by Guvera in the US in December 2010 after it secured a similar patent in Australia the year prior (Patent no. 20,099,06,116, ‘A System And Method For Producing And Displaying Content Representing A Brand Persona’).

Guvera’s original patent provides an overview of a method to connect listeners’ profiles with relevant content, which is then further connected to “advertising from brands being associated with that content”.

The description of the Australian streaming service’s patent also notes the prominent role of ‘contextual data’ as a means of connecting listeners with specific products or services, as well as methods of assigning a ‘quantitative value’ to the ‘degree of association’ between said brands and content.

In its lawsuit, Guvera claims to have invested more than $20 million towards writing source code for the patent, and states that it previously offered Spotify a license for the patent that the Swedish streaming giant allegedly refused.

Guvera also provides links to several Spotify webpages and quotes that it claims as evidence of the patent violations within the lawsuit, noting the link between users and brands’ target demographics and the pool of matched content as designated within the original patent.

As such, Guvera is seeking a number of outcomes from the lawsuit, requesting “a reasonable royalty” and a “post-judgement injunction among other rulings”.

Spotify is yet to submit a public response to Guvera’s complaint.