14 DAY TRIAL // The problem Google is continuously faced with, day and any night is in close connection with threats of lawsuits being thrown at it for copyrights infringement. And that is because of YouTube, the Mountain View's pet video sharing web site which gathers the court summons like they're candy.
This time, it's a bit different, Google is now sued by the Northeastern University and a stand-up run by an associate professor over allegations that Google breached a patent relating to the way Google pulls data from its databases.
All the possible prerequisites have been made by the ones suing, like the filing of the lawsuit in a patent friendly US District Court, in the Eastern District of Texas or waiting for two and a half years since they discovered the possibility of it happening, for better documentation and instrumentation of the case. The last one is only partly true, one other reason for the long wait is that not many lawyers would accept such a case on a contingency basis (getting paid only if the lawsuit is won). This raises a few eyebrows regarding the validity of the claim, but that is a whole different matter.
"This particular patent has to do with the fundamental database architecture, which they use to serve up every single result they serve to you," said Michael Belanger, president of Jarg Corp. in Waltham. Jarg is a privately funded developer of advanced search technology. The company was co-founded by Northeastern associate professor Kenneth P. Baclawski and holds an exclusive license to the patent, which is owned by Northeastern.
The patent covers a method of splitting and chopping up database queries into multiple portions and having each part processed by a different computer. This allows for much faster searching of huge databases, like Google's vast index of web pages on the Internet.
The lawsuit seems to be able to prove itself a big nuisance because over 78% of the patent breach claims filed in Marshall are won by the plaintiffs, a good enough chance for Northwestern.