Xerox sues Google, Yahoo!
Xerox is alleging that major products from Google and Yahoo! infringe a pair of entries in its patent portfolio.
As reported over on ARN, the company - which pioneered many of the technologies used in modern computing in its famous Palo Alto Research Centre - is accusing Google and Yahoo of infringing US Patent No. 6,778,979 and 6,236,994, on a system for automatically generating queries for an information retrieval system and a method and apparatus for the management of information and knowledge within an enterprise environment respectively.
Xerox is accusing Google and Yahoo! of infringing the newer of the two patents - 6,778,979, which was filed in 2001 and granted in 2004 - with their AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing products, which represent the main source of income for the two companies. A threat to that revenue stream is likely to cause some sleepless nights for executives, and possibly even make the companies more likely to accede to demands for licensing fees from Xerox rather than risk an injunction.
The second accusation is that the earlier patent - 6,236,994, which was filed in 1998 and granted in 2001 - is infringed by the company's maps, video streaming, and shopping comparison services due to their ability to integrated data held in different sources into a single unified interface.
Whilst a lawsuit from someone as big as Xerox is bad news for the two companies, life gets worse for Google: according to V3.co.uk the company is also facing an investigation into anti-competitive behaviour from the European Union following complaints from price comparison site Foundem, lawyer-themed search engine eJustice, and shopping portal Ciao - which is currently owned by Microsoft.
Are you surprised to see Xerox going after two major players in the search engine market this way, or does the company have the right to defend itself against patent infringement? Should the patents have even been granted in the first place? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums Replyhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7307442/Google-to-appeal-Italian-court-ruling.html
Bad day for Google all around.
Hardly a patent troll, most patents come from actual products developed and available in the market. Document solution is essentially the easiest way to sum up the business, in terms of anything related to documents or information management, right from data entry, to handling, to transmitting it, to printing it, so a very broad range of technologies are used.
Read the article, not just the heading, all the details are in the 200 or so words!
pendragon is write, there was a time when Xerox didn't patent their developments and as such missed out on exclusivity of their inventions of windowed UIs, mice and ethernet. That's one of the reasons there is such a culture of patenting in the company today.
I did read the article and I even followed the patent links but they seem awfully general to me. Maybe my brain isn't working right?
The problem is these patents apply to anything that fits the description, even if they didn't actually make those things.
thats why patents should be discontinued or have a maximum of 5 years for companies to develope and manufacture, after that it becomes a free for all
Wonder if we could patent the process of filing of overly generalised, sweeping patents and sitting on them as a source of income. Then we could troll the patent trolls!!
This is just crazy.
Can you imagine R+D companies spending millions on development only for it all to be lost after 5 years? We would see less and less technological development. The patent system protects companies and individuals that invest money, sometimes their entire life savings.
If you want to use someone a patented idea from another company then negotiate a license with them. Don't steal the idea. If there is justification in this case then Xerox should be compensated.
sounds like information to me, is xerox going to take everyone to court that puts together data and present's it in a formative way?
You still need to be in possession of something that fits the patent's decription. ;)
I agree with you, except here is the clincher: can you prove that the idea is stolen? Those two patents essentially encompass almost everything that goes on in computers and I highly doubt that the whole industry stole the idea from xerox.
If the defence can prove the idea existed before the patent was granted then it invalidates the patent. Looks like it will be down to precise wording which is why the whole patent process takes so long in the first place, getting all the lawyer wording sorted!
I think it's time the patent process required a working example, prototype or something similar to make a patent application possible rather than just a random idea that is chosen and then basically documented for abuse later on. It should not matter whether or not the company or person goes ahead with production of the content of their patent, but they should at least show willing.