A virtually unknown company called PersonalWeb Technologies has launched a series of patent infringement suits against some of the internet’s most important companies, including Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, and IBM.
The lawsuits assert a grab-bag of patents covering everything from search to internet services to storage. For example, PersonalWeb says that Apple’s iTunes and iCloud services violate six data-processing, and access-control patents it holds.
Confusingly, PersonalWeb has also sued cloud hosting company Rackspace, saying that the company’s “Rackspace Cloud Servers and GitHub Code Hosting Service” violate its patents. GitHub and Rackspace are two separate companies, although GitHub — a provider of source code management and collaborative software development services — is a customer of Rackspace’s.
“It’s apparent that the people filing the suit don’t understand the technology or the products enough to realize that Rackspace Cloud Servers and GitHub are completely different products from different companies,” said Rackspace Chief Technology Officer John Engates in an email.
Engates called PersonalWeb “a patent troll looking for a settlement.”
Neither PersonalWeb nor its attorneys returned messages on Tuesday.
The company sued seven companies in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Monday. They are: Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM, Rackspace, and Nexsan Technologies, a storage company.
Last December, PersonalWeb sued another six technology giants, citing the same patent portfolio. They are Google, Hewlett-Packard’s Autonomy division, EMC, Amazon, NetApp, and Caringo, a storage software company.
The patents asserted in these lawsuits were developed by a company called Kinetech Inc. The portfolio was split up in 2000, and it’s now co-owned by PersonalWeb and Level 3 Communications, a large internet infrastructure company.
A Level 3 spokeswoman said that her company has nothing to do with the lawsuits, but is named in legal filings because it is co-owner of the patent portfolio.
PersonalWeb just happens to be located in one of the most patent-lawsuit-friendly districts of the country. Based in Tyler Texas, it bills itself as the maker of a “social learning platform and digital content management system.” This story has been updated to include comment from Rackspace
PersonalWeb Technologies et. al. v. Rackspace et. al.[#embed: https://www.scribd.com/embeds/106190890/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-25bux91dn5xyee4v3bgt]
Photo: Orangesparrow/Flickr
