A case was recently brought forth by Mr. Joannes Van Der Meer, a Dutch computer programmer, who alleged that Facebook infringed on his patents, when he attempted to launch a social network site known as Surfbook over 10 years ago. Facebook, on the other hand, has defended themselves by saying that the patents granted to Van Der Meer were obvious and therefore, should be invalidated.
One tricky complication with regards to this case is that though the patents were granted in 2001 and 2002, a full year before the launch of Facebook, Mr. Van Der Meer passed away in 2004. As such, Facebook is being sued not by Van Der Meer himself, but a company known as Rembrandt Social Media. Rembrandt, incidentally, is actually a company that specializes in suing on behalf of patent holders and has thus been accused of being a patent troll.
As a company with a well-known history of intellectual property violation lawsuits, Facebook has been very successful at fighting these cases. The most well-known example, dramatized in the movie The Social Network, is the story of how Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, supposedly stole the idea from the Winklevoss twins during his time at Harvard. In the time that Facebook has been around, it has had to defend against several similar lawsuits and has succeeded in settling all but one outside of court. In that one case, Facebook was victorious in front of a jury.
Rembrandt is making the argument that several of Facebook's key features, including its "like" button were directly copied from Van Der Meer's Surfbook. On the other hand, Facebook has said that many of these were obvious ideas, and as such, they should not have been patentable in the first place. One thing that will certainly help Facebook will be the hindsight bias that will inevitably influence the jurors. By seeing how rapidly the space of online social media and social networking has evolved, it may be hard to deny that such innovations as Facebook would not have inevitably come into being, even without Van Der Meer's Surfbook.
It will be extremely interesting to see the outcome of this case, as it may have large monetary repercussions for the social networking giant, Facebook.
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trial-underway-patent-case-facebook-24093943
One tricky complication with regards to this case is that though the patents were granted in 2001 and 2002, a full year before the launch of Facebook, Mr. Van Der Meer passed away in 2004. As such, Facebook is being sued not by Van Der Meer himself, but a company known as Rembrandt Social Media. Rembrandt, incidentally, is actually a company that specializes in suing on behalf of patent holders and has thus been accused of being a patent troll.
As a company with a well-known history of intellectual property violation lawsuits, Facebook has been very successful at fighting these cases. The most well-known example, dramatized in the movie The Social Network, is the story of how Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, supposedly stole the idea from the Winklevoss twins during his time at Harvard. In the time that Facebook has been around, it has had to defend against several similar lawsuits and has succeeded in settling all but one outside of court. In that one case, Facebook was victorious in front of a jury.
Rembrandt is making the argument that several of Facebook's key features, including its "like" button were directly copied from Van Der Meer's Surfbook. On the other hand, Facebook has said that many of these were obvious ideas, and as such, they should not have been patentable in the first place. One thing that will certainly help Facebook will be the hindsight bias that will inevitably influence the jurors. By seeing how rapidly the space of online social media and social networking has evolved, it may be hard to deny that such innovations as Facebook would not have inevitably come into being, even without Van Der Meer's Surfbook.
It will be extremely interesting to see the outcome of this case, as it may have large monetary repercussions for the social networking giant, Facebook.
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trial-underway-patent-case-facebook-24093943
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