Retired Engineering Professor Sues Lyft for Patent Infringement

San Francisco-based ride sharing company Lyft is being sued for patent infringement by a retired Georgia Institute of Technology professor.

In the lawsuit, the former engineering professor Stephen Dickerson claims infringement of his patented technology, which he argues is the core of the company’s business model.

According to Reuters, Lyft has failed to pay Dickerson for using his system technology and automated billing despite the company boasting over $1 billion in revenue in 2017.

“The core of its business model is the transportation system of Prof. Dickerson’s invention; without that system, Lyft literally cannot operate,” said the complaint that was filed on Monday.

Dickerson began work on a computing system that would dispatch vehicles on the basis of location and provided automated billing back in 1999, during a time when major cell phone manufacturers where yet to incorporate GPS technology or any kind of automated billing. A patent application for said technology was approved on April 2000 under the name Communications and Computing Based Urban Transit System.

“[Dickerson’s] system integrated cell phones, the Global Positioning System and automatic billing technology to allow a passenger who needed a ride to be connected to a driver with an empty seat who was going to the same destination,” noted the complaint.

“The system he envisioned would identify the passenger to the driver and vice versa, estimate connection and arrival times and automatically bill the passenger in a safe and secure manner that required no cash to change hands.”

Dickerson recently reacquired the patent that was being held by Georgia Tech for the past 17 years. Before the re-acquisition, Dickerson noticed that Lyft’s GPS and billing technology seemed to be somewhat similar to that of his own and began efforts to reclaim it in order to pursue legal action against possible infringement.

Dickerson is seeking unpaid royalties and an injunction against Lyft through his company RideApp, Inc., an organization devoted to advancing the research, development and deployment of Intelligent Transportation Systems in an effort to improve the nation’s surface transportation system.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan and filed under the case name RideApp Inc v Lyft Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 18-06625.

Lyft, which launched in 2012, has begun to overtake the more established Uber in the ride sharing battle, and is currently valued at $15 billion. The company have yet to release a public statement regarding the lawsuit at the time of writing.