HBAC MatchMaker Media Inc.

HBAC MatchMaker Media, Inc. is a private Delaware corporation with a principal place of business at 3 Center Knolls, Bronxville, New York. It has no public ticker and no disclosed parent. The company was formed around technology its four named inventors — Kenneth C. Hite, Walter S. Ciciora, Tom Alison, and Robert G. Beauregard — developed in the early 1990s for "addressable" (targeted) advertising. Hite, Alison, Beauregard, and Ciciora are listed in its court filings as CEO, President/COO, EVP/Treasurer/Secretary, and EVP/CTO, respectively. No employee count, revenue figure, or market cap is verifiable from public sources.

Operations. HBAC does not appear to sell products or operate a commercial service. It is best characterized as a non-practicing entity / shell licensor that holds and asserts patents. Its asserted portfolio is limited to two related inventions: U.S. Patent No. 5,774,170 ("System and Method for Delivering Targeted Advertisements to Consumers," issued June 30, 1998) and U.S. Patent No. 6,002,393 ("System and Method for Delivering Targeted Advertisements to Consumers Using Direct Commands," issued December 14, 1999). The Stanford NPE database classifies HBAC as a non-practicing entity in the "individual-inventor-started" category, and Unified Patents tags the filings "NPE (Individual)."

Litigation posture. The tracked data shows HBAC as plaintiff in 1 case and defendant in 0 — consistent with a one-way, plaintiff-side NPE that does not face infringement claims of its own. Venue is the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, not the Eastern District of Texas; Delaware is the defendant companies' state of incorporation.

Notable cases. The tracked matter, HBAC MatchMaker Media Inc. v. Fox Broadcasting Company (D. Del., filed March 2013), was part of a roughly twelve-complaint 2013 wave against ad-supported video and web properties, including DirecTV, Google/YouTube, CBS Interactive, Disney/ABC, Yahoo, NBCUniversal/Bravo, Viacom, and Univision. Claim construction in those cases produced stipulated non-infringement judgments, which the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded in HBAC Matchmaker Media, Inc. v. Google, Inc. (May 31, 2016). The Fox action was dismissed with prejudice in 2015.