Google Goes to Court for Patent Infringement

The Mountain View based company was recently sued by iLor, LLC, a Kentucky software company that claim Google infringed their patent entitled "method for adding a user selectable function to a hyperlink." As Google Watch reported, the patent was granted on April 17, the same day the lawsuit was filed, a coincidence that might reveal iLor's intentions to sue the search giant. Although the company tries to register all the technologies it uses and other elements concerning them, this time Google was sent to the judge for patent infringement. In the past, Google granted a patent for the search engine result page that helped the search giant avoid troubles with similar designs built by other companies. The patent number 7.206.839 was granted by iLor on April 17, 2007 and filed on February 14, 2005.

"An enhanced hyperlink and method for providing an enhanced hyperlinked are provided. This invention permits the user to interact with a hyperlink in a variety of ways without necessarily having to open and/or follow the hyperlink. This is accomplished by detecting the presence of a cursor near a hyperlink. When the cursor has remained near the hyperlink for a predetermined time period, a toolbar is displayed containing one or more link enhancements that the user may select. In response to the users' selection of a particular link enhancement, then that link enhancement function would be performed without requiring the any further action," it is mentioned in the description of the patent.

In the past, Google was sued for numerous matters but very often, the company was sent to the court because YouTube, its online video sharing service, published a lot of clips without authorization. The number of the lawsuits is extremely big but the most known is surely filed by Viacom, the owner of MTV and Comedy Central. The company accused Google for copyright infringement and required $1 billion in damages.