The most popular social networking service Facebook
is currently in trouble with a Dutch company which claims to have a patent on
its “Like” button.
Media reports confirmed that a patent-holding firm which cooperated with the
widow and family of a Dutch computer programmer has sued the social network for
infringing two patents. Rembrandt Social Media owned patents from a social
networking pioneer who developed an early “online diary” software. Now it
requires unspecified royalties from the giant.
The now-dead Dutch developer, Joannes Jozef Everardus Van Der Meer, is known as
a “pioneer in the development of user-friendly online technologies” who
invented a diary in the Internet. According to Rembrandt’s lawyer, Tom
Melsheimer, the programmer’s idea was to publish and share data with a select
group of users and the ability to link in other types of data.
The Dutch developer founded a company named Aduna and began work on
implementing his ideas in two patents, registered as numbers 6,289,362 and
6,415,316. At the time Van Der Meer registered surfbook.com domain, but it
remained unclear what, if anything, he did with it – in fact, he died in June
2004, perhaps before he could do anything with the website.
Facebook was launched in 2003 and appeared similar to Van Der Meer’s idea –
both in terms of functionality and technical implementation it corresponded to
the personal online page diary that Van Der Meer had invented.
Another company called AddThis is also named in the lawsuit. Industry observers
point out that this isn’t the case of a patent troll coming up with a way of
squeezing cash from a firm with a previously unknown patent. It is clear that
the social network knew about the Van Der Meer patents, because one of them was
even cited in a Facebook patent of 2012.
According to the Rembrandt Social Media’s lawyer, the outfit is pretty
committed to the idea of finding inventors which have both a compelling story
to tell and a patent that is important or core to some widely used technology.
Tom Melsheimer expects the programmer’s relatives and former colleagues to
testify about the importance of his invention. In case they win, Van Der Meer’s
heirs, and the anonymous owner of Rembrandt IP can claim monopoly rights to an
“online diary” until 2021.
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