Cashing in: Google sued for patent infringement

Mountain View (CA) – GraphOn, a software company that offers remote application access software, said it has filed a patent infringement suit against Google. If GraphOn is right, the Google’s Google Base, AdWords, Blogger, Sites and YouTube services could be colliding with four patents, forcing the search giant to pay GraphOn damages as well as license fees for past and future usage.

Google has built an empire on web applications and just this fact could cost the company big. GraphOn said that Google infringes four patents the company obtained when it acquired Network Engineering Software (NES) in February 2005. According to the suit filed at the United States District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, alleges that Google Base, AdWords, Blogger, Sites and YouTube illegally use a patent-protected method of “maintaining an automated and network-accessible database”.

The same four patents were the subject of nine lawsuits that GraphOn filed against IAC/InterActiveCorp, Yahoo, Match.com, Classified Ventures, eHarmony.com, Juniper Networks, and AutoTrader.com. The AutoTrader.com lawsuit, which only covered two GraphOn patents, was settled with a technology license agreement.

According to a press release GraphOn suit seeks “permanent injunctive relief along with unspecified damages”. Google is expected to defend itself against GraphOn in court; a favorable outcome for GraphOn could not only be very expensive for Google, but also enable GraphOn to expand its suit to possibly thousands of websites.

“The number of patents now owned by GraphOn as a result of the NES acquisition has increased to twenty three, a number that is expected to continue to increase as patent applications on file at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office mature into issued patents,” said Robert Dilworth, GraphOn’s chief executive officer