TheMReport — News and strategies for the evolving mortgage marketplace.
Issue link: http://digital.themreport.com/i/105753
on the web Regulations & Resolutions New product launches and past legal troubles are putting the mortgage marketplace's online activity in the headlines. INSIDE THE INDUSTRY LendingTree Reaches Patent Settlement Concluding a legal battle with QuinStreet, the web-based company has finalized a settlement over patent infringement. LendingTree, LLC, a subsidiary of North Carolina-based Tree.com, announced it has reached a settlement in its patent infringement lawsuit against Internet marketing company QuinStreet, Inc. The lawsuit concerned LendingTree's patent relating to coordinating loans over 10 | The M Report the Internet. In response to LendingTree's suit, QuinStreet filed counterclaims against the company. The two companies have settled on "mutually agreeable terms," according to a release from LendingTree. LendingTree and QuinStreet have executed a license for the patent, and QuinStreet has agreed not to continue challenging it. The terms of the license and other provisions of the settlement are confidential. According to Doug Lebda, chairman and CEO of Tree. com, QuinStreet is the third major company to reach a licensing term on LendingTree's patents. The company anticipates that its trials against other defendants—including Zillow, Adchemy, and Nextag—will take place in early 2014. Former DocX President Pleads Guilty Accused of committing fraud in a robo-signing scheme, the one-time executive reached a plea agreement with the state of Missouri. Former DocX President Lorraine Brown is looking at a two- to three-year stretch in prison after accepting a plea deal over robo-signing practices, according to an announcement from Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster. Under a plea agreement between herself and the state of Missouri, Brown will plead guilty to one felony count of forgery, one felony count of perjury, and one misdemeanor count of making a false declaration. She will be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of "not less than two years and not to exceed three years in the Missouri Department of Corrections," Koster announced. According to charges against her, Brown instituted a policy during the period of March to October 2009 in which employees signed mortgage documents for each other as surrogates. Those documents were notarized and filed across the country. Brown concealed these practices from her clients, the national mortgage servicers, and Lender Processing Services (LPS), DocX's former parent company. LPS worked out a settlement with Koster's office in August 2012. "DocX's robo-signing practices were the worst in the country.