[josaka]

That's not a patent. It's a published application, which was abandoned after being rejected by the USPTO. This can be verified on the USPTO's public PAIR system.

The broader point about yokels from rural TX is less true than it used to be. Post 2012, as a practical matter, to assert a patent, you have to survive an IPR challenge, where a group of more experienced technical staff at the USPTO decide whether the invalidate your patent in an adversarial proceeding.

[josaka]

I should add that the abandoned patent application is a continuation-in-part of two issued patents, if folks are curious: 8,433,617 and 8,346,624, both of which issued before the bar for software patents was raised (and blurred, to mix metaphors) in 2014 by the Supreme Court in Alice v. CLS Bank. Software patents issued before that case tend to not fare well under the current case law and are often thrown out in the first months of a suit (with a few exceptions in certain fora).

[lotsofpulp]

The yokels from rural TX problem got somewhat fixed in May 2017:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TC_Heartland_LLC_v._Kraft_Food...