Uber and Lyft have finally joined hands — in getting sued together by Hailo Technologies. The lawsuit is regarding a patent that Hailo says has been infringed upon by both the ride hailing giants. The patent in question is reportedly held by Hailo Technologies, LLC (U.S. patent 5,973,619) and apparently describes an “automated vehicle dispatch and payment honoring system.” Interestingly enough, the request for this particular patent was filed as early as 1997.
The patent basically covers a software system that can let a user to pick a means of transportation from a menu, enter their destination, choose a particular number of passengers The system then shows you the cost of the ride as estimated by it and you can finally pay through a bunch of scanned cards. Remind you of something? That just goes to show how much you can learn by sifting through old patent.
Just to ward off any future confusion, The Hailo in question is not the one owned by Daimler, which is a cab aggregator of its own. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see what the case amounts too. If Uber and Lyft end up having to shell out money, which in my perspective is very unlikely, so will a whole bunch of other cab aggregator which more or less all operate using the same business model.
