14 DAY TRIAL // Google is being shot at from all angles with lawsuits but it seems to be able to handle them. Or something like that. The "getting shot" part just comes naturally after proving to be the biggest thing on the Internet and with more ramifications than anything else out there.
The "handling them" part is a little more problematic though, for the Mountain View based company. It is usually aimed at for being the owner of lawsuit magnet YouTube that, because of its users, is looking like it is going to be the most sued company in the history of mankind (dramatizing it a little bit). But when the object of the lawsuit filed against you is the very foundation of your business? well, let's just say that it gets a little more complicated.
Earlier this month Google was sued by Northeastern University and a company in Massachusetts that develops distributed search technologies because it was said to be using a patented technology in order to run its online search service developed by Kenneth Baclawski, an associate professor at Northeastern.
James Niccolai of the IDG News Service describes the situation as follows: "The patent describes a distributed database system that breaks queries into fragments and distributes them to multiple computers in a network to get faster search results. The patent was assigned to Northeastern University, which licensed it exclusively to Jarg, a company in Waltham, Massachussets, that was co-founded by Baclawski."
The suit was filed on the 6th of November in the Eastern District of Texas and despite the typical 21 days that are provided to the defendant in order to reply in cases such as this, Google requested and was granted an extension until January 11, 2008. The official position of Google is best described in few words, those that a spokesperson presented the press with: he said the lawsuit is considered to be "without merit."