Farmington Hills-based RouteOne LLC Thursday announced a favorable ruling in a July 6 hearing on motions in the patent litigation brought by DealerTrack in January 2004.
The core of the dispute was DealerTrack's allegation that RouteOne infringed three patents that DealerTrack acquired from CMSI. As a result of prior rulings, only three claims of a single patent remained in dispute.
On Wednesday, Judge Andrew J. Guilford of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, invoking the standard set forth in the Federal Circuit's recent Bilski decision, issued a summary judgment order invalidating the last patent being asserted against RouteOne and Finance Express on the basis of a failure to claim patentable subject matter.
The ruling brings to an end five and a half years of litigation between the parties.
This latest summary judgment win follows the grant in October of 2008 of two other summary judgment motions that invalidated one other patent of DealerTrack and held that RouteOne had not infringed a second patent.
"We are very pleased, but not surprised, about the resolution this case," said Mike Jurecki, RouteOne CEO. "We remain steadfast in our original position announced in January 2004, that we do not, nor have we ever infringed any valid patent owned by DealerTrack. The court, through its rulings, has confirmed RouteOne's position in its summary judgments dismissing the case and rendering two DealerTrack patents invalid and holding the third non-infringed by RouteOne. We are highly confident that we will continue to prevail on any future court action on the matter. RouteOne continues to be committed to providing the industry-leading credit aggregation solution for our finance source and dealer customers. We look forward to the continued growth and development of the RouteOne platform on behalf of those customers."
RouteOne was formed in 2002 by Chrysler Financial, Ford Motor Credit Company, GMAC, and Toyota Financial Services to create a more streamlined credit application for automobile dealers and their customers. Providing access to more than 21,500 dealers in North America, RouteOne's web-based system allows automotive dealers to submit credit applications to the largest indirect lenders, request credit reports, and increase profitability with RouteOne's free Dealer Reporting Suite. RouteOne's open integration business model also allows the dealer to integrate with their choice of a wide variety of best in class providers, including DSPs, CRM systems, F& I modules and menu providers.
More at www.routeone.com.
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