A lawsuit filed on Thursday claims that iGoogle and other Google search personalization efforts rely on patented technology.
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is being sued for allegedly infringing on search engine personalization patents owned by Personalized User Model (PUM), a Texas partnership based in New York.
The lawsuit was filed on Thursday in a U.S. district court in Delaware.
Google has not yet been served with the lawsuit. Attorney Marc S. Friedman of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, the law firm representing PUM, said that will happen on Friday.
"Google is being sued for patent infringement for one reason -- it is using PUM's technology and has benefited greatly from it," said Roy Twersky, an owner of PUM and one of the original inventors, in a statement.
Twersky and his co-inventors, Yochai Konig and Michael Berthold, were issued related search patents in 2005 and 2008 covering search personalization. The 2008 patent is an expansion on the 2005 patent, "Automatic, personalized online information and product services."
According to a spokesperson for Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, Google knew about the 2005 PUM patent because a personalization patent that it filed in 2003 was rejected. The 2005 PUM patent, filed in 2000, was being examined at that time. That's why the lawsuit alleges willful infringement, a charge that brings higher damages.
Twersky and Konig now work at a San Francisco-based speech recognition and Click Here
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Source: informationweek.com
By: Thomas Claburn
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