Google Sued for Patents Infringement… Again
by
on August 18, 2008,
I actually hoped there was nothing to sue Google for any more because everyone who wanted to must have already filed their lawsuits but today’s news proves that I was wrong. Today GraphOn announced that the company had filed a lawsuit against Google in the Eastern District of Texas for patent infringement.
GraphOn claims that Google infringes 4 out of the company’s 23 patents. The patents in question cover GraphOn’s “unique method of maintaining an automated and network-accessible database” and are supposed to be used in quite a number of Google’s properties: Base, AdWords, Blogger, Sites, and YouTube.
In the lawsuit GraphOn seeks permanent injunctive relief and an unspecified amount to cover damages. It will be interesting to know what the amount will be when announced but also how Google will be able to cease infringing its patents because of a pretty loose definition and the number of Google’s services affected.
GraphOn seems to be very active in courts: judging by the information in the press release, the company has already filed lawsuits for patents infringement against an impressive number of companies, including Match.com, Yahoo!, eHarmony, and CareerBuilder. I guess all those previous lawsuits were kind of a warm-up to prepare to eventually sue the internet giant.
The company describes itself as a “leading supplier of cost-effective, cross-platform application publishing and Web-enabling solutions”. Aggressive protection of technologies it owns patents for appears to be an important part of GraphOn business. I am not sure about the outcome of this particular lawsuit but what the company will be sure to achieve is some additional publicity at the very least. Besides, I believe it must be compelling to future customers to buy their products - after all, if Google allegedly infringes patents to use the technology, it must be valuable enough.
