INTERNET
Google fights back against search suit
14-01-2008
by Emmet Ryan
Google is off to the courts again, filing a counterclaim against a patent infringement lawsuit over the use of a database system.
Google's move follows a joint suit being filed by Boston's Northeastern University and search technology company Jarg over a patent for a distributed database system that breaks queries into fragments and distributes them to multiple computers in a network to get faster search results.
The suit was filed in November in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and seeks an injunction preventing Google from further infringement, as well as royalty payments and damages. The plaintiffs contend that Google uses this system to run its search engine, and that the system was invented by Kenneth Baclawski, an associate professor at Northeastern and one of Jarg's founders. Northeastern was awarded a patent for the system, which it has licensed exclusively to Jarg.
Google has now hit back by filing a counterclaim asking the court to dismiss the patent as invalid. In a response released on Friday the search giant argued that the patent is invalid and should not have been awarded in the first place, and asked the court to declare the patent invalid and unenforceable. Both parties have requested a jury trial and the case is expected to take around 18 months to 2 years to resolve.
This is not the first time Google has been on the receiving end of a lawsuit and it likely won't be the last. The internet giant is learning that life can be tough at the top with a steady trickle of disgruntled competitors and rivals lining up to take shots at the biggest dog in the yard. In March 2007 Google was slapped with a USD1 billion lawsuit from Viacom over the use of copyrighted videos on YouTube.
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