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Patent Troll Goes After Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM, Others

Posted by Soulskill on from the go-big-or-go-home dept.

zaba writes "A company named PersonalWeb Technologies has decided to sue a host of heavy players in the tech industry, including Apple, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and Yahoo! for patents it holds related to data processing. They have a previous suit against other big names like Amazon, Google and HP. Anyone care to guess where the company is based or where the suits were filed?" The company is also targeting GitHub, but seems to have accidentally sued Rackspace — GitHub's host — instead. Rackspace has responded, saying, "It’s apparent that the people filing the suit don’t understand the technology or the products enough to realize that Rackspace Cloud Servers and GitHub are completely different products from different companies."

7 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. List of their patents by nagasrinivas · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.personalweb.com/Technology.html
    Enjoy!

    1. Re:List of their patents by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 5, Informative

      5,978,791 - Data processing system using substantially unique identifiers to identify data items, whereby identical data items have the same identifiers -UUID
      6,415,280 - Identifying and requesting data in network using identifiers which are based on contents of data - CRC Hash
      6,928,442 - Enforcement and policing of licensed content using content-based identifiers - See WinAmp and Windows Media player
      and so on...

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    2. Re:List of their patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      Maybe going back to 4chan with the other 13 year old children would make you feel better.

  2. Their first patent... by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,978,791.PN.&OS=PN/5,978,791&RS=PN/5,978,791 They better go and sue Oracle. This describes the function of java.util.Hashtable.... hangon, that's been around since 1996 and the patent was filled in 1997.

  3. Re:Why? by Patent+Lover · · Score: 4, Informative

    They have a "rocket docket" which processes patent suits more quickly than other district courts and an attorney licensed to practice in any state can practice before the court.

  4. Re:Enough Already by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The madness of Emperor Caligula went on for some time too before someone had the balls to turn him into a fucking pin cushion. Is this really any different? We now have the equivalent of a horse for a senator, how long will this go on before someone grabs his balls and does what needs to be done to fix this nonsense?

  5. I'm involved in this - providing prior art by viewtouch · · Score: 4, Informative

    A lawyer with a law firm defending one of these companies contacted me and visited me last week to review prior art which I have, with the hope that I can assist them and their client in invalidating one or more of these patents. Tomorrow I will be delivering running a copy of my software to the firm to allow them to closely examine it. Most of the companies which have been threatened with patent infringement lawsuits have caved in and agreed to pay the patent holders (Priceline founder Jay Walker and others) rather than attempt to defend themselves in court, however. We'll see how it plays out.