Chances are, if you redeem a digital coupon at your local grocery store, that coupon is offered via a partnership with one of a handful of digital coupon providers. Inmar Intelligence is one of them. Neptune Retail Solutions is another.
And now, two years after a dispute over the inner workings of their digital coupon programs led to litigation – in something of a coupon world equivalent of Coke suing Pepsi, or McDonald’s suing Burger King – the two companies have agreed to settle their differences.
Back in 2023, Inmar sued former Coupons.com owner Quotient Technology, which has since been acquired by Neptune. The dispute was a highly technical one, having to do with patented methods of managing the coupon validation and reimbursement process, all of which happens after you apply a digital coupon to your purchase and are happily on your way.
When you hand over a paper coupon to a cashier, the traditional method of processing it is for the store to collect all the coupons redeemed that day, pack them up and ship them off to a third-party coupon processor, who sorts them and reimburses the retailers on behalf of the manufacturers who issued them.
Inmar argued that its patent-protected digital systems “revolutionize coupon processing” by validating coupons instantly, as they’re scanned at the checkout, and providing manufacturers with real-time insights into how their coupon campaigns are performing.
And it accused Quotient of infringing those patents by doing substantially the same thing, without authorization.
Quotient denied any infringement and argued that the patents themselves were invalid. It also asked the court to dismiss the case, pointing out that Inmar doesn’t even own the patents and merely licenses them from patent holder Intelligent Clearing Network.
Over the summer, the two companies notified the court they had “reached an agreement in principle to settle all claims.” And now, that settlement has been finalized. Each side has agreed to cover their own costs, legal fees and expenses. Other terms of the settlement were not disclosed, though a notice filed with the court references unspecified “financial terms” spelled out in the confidential agreement.
“We’re pleased to have reached a resolution,” Inmar’s EVP and President of MarTech Solutions Rob Weisberg said in a statement. “As a company committed to innovation, we’ll continue to invest in advancing secure, scalable solutions that deliver value for our partners across the industry.”
You probably never give much thought as to what happens to a coupon after you redeem it and get your discount. But the companies that do the work on the back end, helping to make coupons possible, sure do. Now two of those companies can go back to competing in the marketplace – instead of in court.
