This week, Walmart Inc. filed a legal complaint against BJ’s Wholesale Club Holdings Inc. over its Express Pay mobile shopping app. The suit alleges that Scan & Go features introduced by Sam’s Club in 2016 and adopted by Walmart in 2018 infringe on features of this app. Sam’s West, Inc. and Walmart Apollo, LLC sued BJ’s on March 22, 2022, in the Middle District of Florida federal court.
Scan & Go was introduced to make shopping easier for customers by scanning and bagging items as they shop, and then checking out and paying with their mobile devices when they’re done. Walmart has filed a lawsuit alleging four patent infringements in BJ’s app, which will be released in late 2021. According to media reports, the company is suing for damages incurred due to the alleged theft of its technology by another company. Bloomberg Law was the first to break the news.
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Consumers concerned about sanitary and health issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic embraced cashierless checkout technologies, such as these types of apps and those powered by computer vision that don’t require scanning barcodes. Consumers rely on touchless technology to avoid physical contact in stores at the height of the pandemic, Capgemini reported. Even as vaccination rates have increased and COVID-19 regulations have begun to loosen, these technologies have remained popular.
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