Company overview. CoolSavings.com, Inc. was incorporated in Michigan in December 1994 as Interactive Coupon Marketing Group, Inc., renamed coolsavings.com inc. in November 1998, and later known as CoolSavings, Inc. Its CoolSavings.com site launched in March 1997, headquartered at 8755 W. Higgins Road, Chicago. It held a May 2000 NASDAQ IPO at $7 per share and was delisted in fall 2001 after failing minimum valuation and bid-price rules; Landmark Communications gained effective voting control after a $15 million 2001 infusion. A 1999 court opinion put the company at about 60 employees; the Chicago Tribune reported roughly $40 million net revenue for 2000 against a $34.7 million net loss. CoolSavings was renamed Q Interactive, Inc. in January 2006 and was acquired by Fluent, Inc. in 2016 for about $21 million.
Products / services. An online coupon and e-marketing company. Registered members received targeted printable and electronic coupons, rebates, samples, gift certificates and contests; advertisers paid for targeted promotion against its opt-in consumer database, which reached roughly 45 million registered users by 2006. Offerings included Coupon Technology Solution hosting software, the CoolSavings Marketing Network (later the Q Network), category newsletters and targeted email, direct mail, product sampling and banner advertising.
Patent-litigation posture. An operating company asserting its own patent rather than an NPE. It is plaintiff in all 10 tracked cases and defendant in none; externally, Catalina Marketing and e-centives also asserted patents against it, so the disputes were effectively two-way. It obtained U.S. Patent 5,761,648 (June 1998) covering an interactive marketing network and process using electronic certificates, and filed roughly nine to ten infringement suits in the Northern District of Illinois—its home venue in Chicago, not a plaintiff-friendly out-of-district forum.
Notable cases. Its suits against iVillage (1999) and emaildirect's Value-mail settled. Its dispute with Planet U ended in a July 2000 cross-license; CoolSavings acquired Planet U in 2004. The '648 patent reached the Federal Circuit in Catalina Marketing Int'l v. coolsavings.com, 289 F.3d 801 (Fed. Cir. 2002), which reversed in part the district court's non-infringement summary judgment. Other tracked defendants include BrightStreet.com (which sought patent interference), IQ.Commerce, CouponSurfer, Hot Coupons, Xadvantage and Emaginet/e-centives.