Portland, OR, will sell transit tickets with smartphone app

[CHamilton]

Portland becomes first city to let you buy transit tickets with your smartphone

TriMet, Oregon’s largest provider of bus, light rail and commuter rail transit services, today unveiled its new e-ticket app that was built by GlobeSherpa, a Portland-based provider of secure mobile ticketing software and services.Essentially, the free app eliminates the need to purchase paper tickets from a machine and allows you to easily buy transit fares using your smartphone.

TriMet told The Oregonian that it expects this new app to save the agency millions due to reduced transaction costs and elimination of ticket machine maintenance. The app is out to beta testers now and will go public this summer.

 

[the_traveler]

I love it! The MBTA and Amtrak apps are so easy to use and so handy!

 

[CHamilton]

I love it! The MBTA and Amtrak apps are so easy to use and so handy!

I'm happy about it too, since I have found that a fair number of Tri-Met's TVMs are out of service frequently. This past weekend, I had to go to three different machines at two different MAX stations to find one that actually worked.

 

[fairviewroad]

I hope this doesn't come at the expense of increasing neglect of the remaining ticket vending machines. Many

people will still need to use them. And occasional riders like me probably won't bother to download the app and

register their credit card. I'd much rather just buy a ticket on the three or four times a year I need one. But for

regular riders, I can understand the incredible advance this is.

 

[CHamilton]

How Portland’s public transit mobile ticket app maker recovered after being sued for patent infringment

Being sued for patent infringement is no fun — and especially if you’re a fast-growing young startup. But that’s exactly what happened to GlobeSherpa, the Portland-based startup that built TriMet’s successful public transit mobile ticketing app.
Shortly after GlobeSherpa won a crucial $3.2 million contract in September with Virginia Railway Express (VRE), Bytemark — a similar ticketing startup based in New York — sent a letter to GlobeSherpa CEO Nat Parker that accused his company of infringing on a Bytemark patent related to a visually validated mobile ticketing system.

Parker wrote back to Bytemark, which finished second in the bidding for the VRE contract, noting that he believed there was no infringement at play. Four months later, Bytemark filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

“We were really upset about the fact that these guys were leveling a lawsuit at us,” Parker told GeekWire. “We believed sincerely that we did not infringe on their patent. We also felt that this was a tactic to derail the fact that we won a contract that they wanted to win.”

GlobeSherpa then went out and raised $790,000 to prepare for a legal battle and actually countersued Bytemark for tortuous interference and defamation.

While this was going on, VRE decided it wanted to stay out and put a hold on the new deal with Globesherpa. That left Parker and his team in an extremely difficult spot — either fight Bytemark in court and spend lots of money, or settle the case and preserve the $3.2 million contract with VRE.

The startup ended up settling and today announced that it has entered a cross-licensing agreement with Bytemark while also hiring the company as a subcontractor on the VRE project.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I used to think calling a company a "patent troll" was a bit of an exaggeration. After having read many articles on the subject over the course of several years it would appear to me that America's patent system is almost completely out of control at this point. Although originally intended to promote innovation today's patent process does virtually everything it can to stifle it.