Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
Ig Nobel Prizes 2009 award winners
MHT's Efrain Viscarolasaga: How social networking is changing business
MHT managing editor Rodney Brown on NECN: 22 tech companies give back to community
A Boston newspaper publisher has just fired a legal salvo against a Web 2.0 upstart it accuses of siphoning away revenue it should rightfully own.
Phoenix Media LLC, the parent company of the Boston Phoenix, is the latest entity to sue Facebook Inc. The company’s lawsuit, filed in Boston district court yesterday, alleges the social media giant infringed on a patent held by a subsidiary for publishing personal pages on online dating services.
Tele-Publishing Inc., based in Phoenix headquarters on Brookline Ave., is part of Phoenix Media’s People2People group, which has provided voice personals and dating services to newspapers since the 1980s, according to its website.
The patent in dispute, issued in 2001, covers a “method and apparatus for providing a personal page” – including selecting a template, contributing text and graphics, and allowing others permission to view the page.
The patent document includes examples of file directories, flow charts, and block network diagrams. According to Phoenix Media’s complaint, Facebook’s computer network and method of creating and sharing a personals page infringes the Tele-Publishing patent.
In 2001, Tele-Publishing introduced TPI Connect, an online service based on the patent at issue in Wednesday’s filing. Its customers include the Washington Post, which publishes a white-label personals site that is based on the company’s technology.
Now based in California, Facebook launched in 2004 as an online social network for Harvard students, and Phoenix Media’s claim is not the first to emerge out of the company’s Boston roots. In February, Facebook paid a reported $65 million to settle claims by founder Mark Zuckerberg’s former Harvard classmates that he stole the idea from their competing student networking service, ConnectU.
A Facebook spokesman could not immediately be reached.
A similar case that defines patent eligibility, In re Bilski, will likely set precedence on the patent coverage of business methods. The case is due to be argued in the U.S. Supreme Court on November 9.
RSS Feeds
Comments
Please Login/Register to post comments.
No comments have been added or approved.