Over 1 trillion likes have been made by social network's users.
Social network giant Facebook has been sued over the use of its trademark "Like" button, joined by other features of the site.
A patent-holding company is suing Facebook and the social media firm, Add This, on behalf of a late Dutch programmer, Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer. Rembrandt Social Media believes that Facebook's success was partly based on the utilization of two of Van Der Meer's patents without permission.
"We believe Rembrandt's patents represent an important foundation of social media as we know it, and we expect a judge and jury to reach the same conclusion based on the evidence," said lawyer Tom Melsheimer from legal firm, Fish and Richardson, which represents the patent holder.
Rembrandt owns the patents for technologies Van Der Meer utilized to build a social network called Surfbook before his death in 2004. He was granted the patents back in 1998, which is five years before Facebook arrived.
According to legal papers filed by Fish and Richardson, Surfbook was a social diary allowing users to share information with friends and family, as well as approving data by using a "like" button. The lawsuit indicates that Facebook is aware of the patents because it referred to them in its own applications to patent a number of social networking technologies.
Facebook's 'Like' feature has been a well-known social tool for the website. During October 2012, the firm said that over 1.13 trillion 'Likes' have been made.
You are so sued.
Not to mention the first sentence. Read it again. It says that features of the site have joined the suit and are suing Facebook, if you read it real fast. At least, that's how I read it. I thought that the like feature was suing Facebook. Maybe I should go get some sleep.
Creating a social site that's based off rudimentary social interactions and not offering the ability to make others aware that one "likes" their friends content would make the website incomplete, and this functionality is implied by the nature of the site.
This is quite stupid.
you know, this is a case where i hope the troll wins, because they had everything, a competitor came by and more or less said great idea, we want it too.
Yes? No? I give them them that anyway.