Kickstarter.com seems to be on the verge of winning its well-publicized declaratory judgment suit against ArtistShare, the crowdfunding website that claims its patent covers Kickstarter’s social financing business model.
Kickstarter’s lawyers at Steptoe & Johnson filed suit against ArtistShare and its patent-holding unit Fan Funded LLC back in October 2011, seeking a ruling that their client doesn’t infringe Fan Funding’s crowdfunding IP. In a Feb. 8 letter to U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty in Manhattan, ArtistShare essentially threw in the towel at least at the trial court level. Counsel for ArtistShare and Fan Funded acknowledged that, under a claim construction ruling that Crotty issued last month, there’s no way they can show that Kickstarter infringes.
