Judge Rejects TRA Patent Claims against Kantar

A New York federal judge has rejected TRA's attempt to block the roll-out of Kantar Media's RapidView media planning tool, which TRA claimed was a direct 'rip-off' of its own Media TRAnalytics tool.

Back in July, TRA investor WPP filed a lawsuit against the media measurement specialist, over its patent infringement claims, and denied that its RapidView product is a copy of the TRA solution.

Media TRAnalytics matches TV data from set-top boxes (STBs) in 1.7 million households with CPG purchasing data from 57 million households, to link ads actually received with the products the same households actually buy. RapidView - which was launched in March after what TRA describes as 'more than three years of confidential access' to its technology and processes - links data from 100,000 national households with purchase behavior data drawn from the Kantar Shopcom database containing transaction-level data for 231 million US consumers.

In a statement, Kantar said the court had agreed that its technology predated TRA's patent, with Judge Shira Scheindlin explaining that an earlier Kantar Media TV audience/shopping data system was developed in 2005 before TRA started trading.

George Shababb (pictured), president of Kantar Media Audiences North America, said in the statement: 'TRA's patent relates to basic techniques that audience measurement firms have been using for decades. I'm pleased that Judge Scheindlin has denied TRA's motion and recognized Kantar Media's right to continue serving its customers in this market.'

Web sites: www.traglobal.com , www.wpp.com and www.kantarmedia-audiences.com .