The social networking giant Facebook, on June 13th 2014, successfully defended itself against a lawsuit that claimed the social media company infringed on patents held by a Dutch programmer who launched a website called "Surfbook" more than a decade ago.
A holding company called Rembrandt Social Media had alleged that a now-deceased Joannes Jozef Everardus Van Der Meer, developed and patented methods for running a web-based personal diary before Facebook came into existence in 2003. But Van Der Meer's website, Surfbook, never got off the ground.
Surfbook was an early social networking service that based on technologies whose patents were filed by Van der Meer in 1998 and granted in 2001 and 2002 (a year before Facebook "Facemash"). The service allowed users to share their information with selected people and approve posts using a "Like" button, and to link to external information.
Rembrandt that holds these patents first filed a lawsuit for infringement against the social network giant on February 5, 2013. The civil trial between Facebook and Rembrant with the law firm of Fish & Richardson, went in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. A jury returned a verdict in favor of Facebook after a weeklong civil trial.
Facebook said the patents should never have been issued to Van Der Meer, in part because they described methods that would be obvious to people in the trade.
The main factor that gives Facebook an upper hand is its "hindsight bias". Facebook's rapid development throughout the history of social media, and its ubiquitous status can conclude that its development was inevitable, thus making Van Der Meer's patents weren't unique.
Another factor that favors Facebook is a pretrial ruling from judge T.S. Ellis III that bars Rembrandt's expert on potential damages from testifying. As a result, it's unclear what kind of judgment Rembrandt could win if the jury finds that Facebook has infringed. In court papers, though, Facebook has expressed concern that it could still be subject to damages.
In the courtroom, more than 30 three-ring binders stuffed with legal documents pertaining to the case line judge Ellis' desk, while a jury of four women and three men sort through dense testimony about software code and data configuration. Several teams of lawyers from patent-law firms were also present in the courtroom.
The lawsuit alleges that Facebook infringed upon two of Van Der Meer's patents. The first, U.S. Patent No. 6,415,316, introduced a "Method and apparatus for implementing a web page diary." The second, U.S. Patent No. 6,289,362, outlined a "System and method for generating, transferring and using an annotated universal address," and has the "Like" button in its sights. The lawsuit also alleged that technology called Bigpipe, used by Facebook to speed up its web pages, infringed the patents.
Social bookmarking company Add This is also being sued for violation of the second patent.
"Although Mark Zuckerberg did not start what became Facebook until 2003, it bears a remarkable resemblance, both in terms of its functionality and technical implementation, to the personal web page diary that Van Der Meer had invented years earlier," wrote Rembrandt's lawyers in their complaint.
Rembrandt is a company that specializes in filing lawsuits on behalf of patent holders. The company tried unsuccessfully before the trial began to appeal that ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit court of Appeals in Richmond.
And during the trial, Rembrandt complained that questions Ellis asked of witnesses unfairly hurt Rembrandt's case in front of the jury, and asked for a new trial. Ellis rejected the motion.
Facebook is a frequent target of patent lawsuits. The company is no stranger to being sued by others that claimed to own the patents that power the social giant. However, the social giant typically been successful in fending them off from the court. The California-based company has before agreed to pay a $65 million settlement to the Winklevoss brothers, Harvard classmates Zuckerberg, when ConnectU filed a lawsuit against it, and claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea.
