Smarter Agent, Inc.

Smarter Agent, Inc. was a research and development company, founded by Brad W. Blumberg and Eric M. Blumberg that built early mobile location-based apps.

In 2008, Smarter Agent raised private equity from angel investors led by Ira Lubert and became an LLC. The company began offering mobile apps to the real estate industry, as well as grew its mobile inventions and patent portfolio. Smarter Agent raised additional equity from angel investors.[1]

The company has aggressively worked to protect its technology, arguing in a sequence of lawsuits that its IP precludes any competing service from creating an app that allows a user to search for real estate. In 2011, the company filed a series of patent infringement lawsuits alleging violation of several patents held by the company, including patents 6,385,541, 6,496,776 and 7,072,665.[2]

In 2013, Smarter Agent Mobile was spun out to focus on its growing mobile SaaS business, and Smarter Agent, LLC continued to hold the company's intellectual property (IP).[3] In 2013, [{CoreLogic]] licensed the firm's technology for use in its offerings.[3]

Originally based in Camden, New Jersey as part of a business incubator, the company relocated and is headquartered in Collingswood, New Jersey. The Smarter Agent technology is used as a white-label product as the engine behind the mobile property search tools used by such real estate franchise firms as Berkshire Hathaway, Keller Williams Realty and Sotheby's International Realty, as well as 3,000 local realty firms. Available to users on iOS, Android and Windows, the company's property search tool was downloaded 4 million times in 2014. Competing with Trulia and Zillow, the company's search tool benefits from the improved accruacy of having data direct from each realty company[4]

References

  1. ↑ "Smarter Agent expands mobile presence for real estate listings". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2013-10-07.
  2. ↑ Staff. "Smarter Agent suing more companies over mobile real estate search patent", The American Genius, October 10, 2011. Accessed March 18, 2016. "In summary, the lawsuits allege that no one but Smarter Agent can create a mobile app in which real estate is searched- not IDX, not third party sites, not agents, not brokers, and when a company does, they protect their patent by suing for injunctive relief and monetary damages."
  3. 1 2 Brambila, Andrea V. "CoreLogic licenses Smarter Agent mobile patents; Lawsuits against other companies stayed pending patent challenges", Inman News, February 12, 2013. Accessed March 18, 2016. "Smarter Agent will divide itself into two companies: Smarter Agent Mobile to service the company’s mobile app customers, and a patent licensing company."
  4. ↑ Reyes, Juliana. "Smarter Agent's white-label real estate apps saw 4M+ downloads in 1 year", Technical.ly Philly, July 30, 2014. Accessed March 18, 2016.
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