A lot of people don’t realize that the 2007 Elf Yourself site almost didn’t launch. At the 11th hour a company called PixFusion emerged from nowhere and claimed to have a patent on the “upload your face” mechanism that made EVB’s site (and 1000 other viral sites) work. PixFusion threatened a law suit and, after, weeks of negotiation, OfficeMax and PixFusion settled and the site was able to move forward and, as you may remember, received 193MM visitors that holiday season.
Now, after three years of continued success, the “patent-holder” has contacted EVB and requested that the agency take Elf Yourself out of its portfolio website. It’s irritating when you develop an amazingly successful property, or icon for a client and then are not allowed to even take credit for it in your portfolio. Well, we are proud of what we created and the elf is staying in our portfolio. We’ll see where this one goes.
Daniel,
as a person that would very much like to utilize this “technology” in future projects, I am infuriated at Pixfusion’s ability to obtain a patent on such an unbelievably simple yet essential concept (ie cropping a head to scale and placing it for use on ANY output medium)
It seems they would try to get a patent on finger-painting and “turkey hand paintings” as well.
Nonetheless, the problem seems to be in the rationale of the patent grantor, no?
Have there been any actions toward putting the Pixfusion patents through reexamination? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reexamination)
Very much hoping to get a response on this. Thanks so much.