{"id":1449,"date":"2013-02-12T20:39:50","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T20:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=1449"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:54:03","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:54:03","slug":"rembrandt-social-media-sues-facebook-for-infringing-two-patents-including-the-like-button","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/rembrandt-social-media-sues-facebook-for-infringing-two-patents-including-the-like-button\/","title":{"rendered":"Rembrandt Social Media Sues Facebook for Infringing Two Patents, Including the \u201cLike\u201d Button"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday, February 9, 2013 by Agnieszka Zmuda
\nOn Tuesday, February 5, Fish and Richardson<\/a>, on behalf of Rembrandt Social Media LP, sued<\/a> Facebook and AddThis<\/a> for patent infringement.\u00a0 The complaint<\/a> identifies the two patents in question as U.S. Patent No. 6,415,316<\/a> and No. 6,289,362<\/a>.\u00a0 Both of these were issued<\/a> over 10 years ago to a now deceased Dutch computer programmer, Joannes Jozef Everardus Van Der Meer.\u00a0 Rembrandt is now the owner of these patents.\u00a0 Facebook is accused to have infringed both patents, while AddThis is accused of infringing the \u2018362 patent.
\nFacebook may wish they had an \u201cUnlike\u201d button for this story.\u00a0 Having already 20 patent lawsuits<\/a> filed against them in just 2012, Facebook should not be too surprised at the news of another one.\u00a0 After all, the \u201cit\u201d thing now for patent-holding companies<\/a> is to sue big Internet companies; even Apple<\/a>, who has been criticized<\/a> for trolling themselves, is not safe from other patent trolls<\/a>.\u00a0 Criticism for patent trolling is not unfounded, as a recent study<\/a> put the cost of these lawsuits at $29 billion, with little showing that any innovation was promoted by such actions.
\nHowever, unlike the many patent-holding companies that are suing hundreds of companies at once, Rembrandt Social Media is considered to be successful<\/a> in its genre; it has only sued 16 companies so far, and hires the elite legal talent to represent them.\u00a0 Tom Melsheimer, Rembrandt\u2019s lawyer, sees his client as different from the other patent-holding companies.\u00a0 According to him<\/a>, \u201cRembrandt is pretty committed to the idea of finding inventors that have a compelling story to tell, and a patent that is important or core to some widely used technology.\u201d
\nIn this case, Rembrandt is actually working at the request of the family of the Dutch inventor who owns the two patents in question.\u00a0 The complaint states<\/a> that Van Der Meer was a \u201cpioneer in the development of user-friendly Web technologies.\u201d\u00a0 Van Der Meer had formed<\/a> a company in the Netherlands, now called \u201cAduna,\u201d and developed the ideas for his patents there. \u00a0He also registered<\/a> the domain name \u201cwww.surfbook.com;\u201d although it is unclear what this was to become as Van Der Meer died before he was able to finish his vision.\u00a0 Rembrandt, along with the family, believe that Van Der Meer\u2019s two patents are the foundation of social media, deserving credit and compensation until 2021, when the exclusive rights to an \u201conline diary\u201d expire.
\nThe first patent issued<\/a>, the \u2018316 patent, was for a \u201cmethod and apparatus to create a \u2018diary\u2019 containing multimedia references to contents of Websites.\u201d\u00a0 Melsheimer, in an interview,<\/a> describes Van Der Meer\u2019s invention as the beginning of what was going to become social networking.\u00a0 The second patent issued<\/a>, the \u2018362 patent, was for \u201ca system enables a user to maintain a catalog of network objects of interest to the user.\u201d
\nThe resemblance of Facebook to Van Der Meer\u2019s patents exists<\/a> \u201cboth in terms of its functionality and technical implementation.\u201d\u00a0 The complaint<\/a> likens Facebook to the \u201cpersonal webpage diary\u201d that Van Der Meer invented years before in the \u2018316 patent, as it allows ordinary users to chronologically organize their personal information and third-party content.\u00a0 Although the presentation of the information through Facebook is different, this format lets the users share<\/a> \u201cspecific diary entries with a selected group of people, such as the user’s friends, through the use of user-settable privacy levels.”\u00a0 Another alleged infringement of the \u2018316 patent involves Facebook\u2019s business model of acquiring revenue through advertisements on the \u201cpersonal diary pages<\/a>,\u201d which apparently is already claimed in the patent. As to the \u2018362 patent, the use by Facebook of its \u201cshare\u201d and \u201clike\u201d buttons to transfer content from third party websites onto the \u201cuser\u2019s Facebook diary\u201d is infringing on Van Der Meer\u2019s previous invention.\u00a0 To strengthen all the infringement claims against Facebook, the lawsuit also points to the fact<\/a> that Facebook cited one of Van Der Meer\u2019s patents in one of their own that was issued in 2012.
\nMelsheimer is optimistic on Rembrandt\u2019s chances of winning at trial, believing<\/a> that \u201cRembrandt\u2019s patents represent an important foundation of social media.\u201d\u00a0 Even though to an ordinary user, there does not seem to be much relevance between Facebook and these patents, Melsheimer answers<\/a> that by going to the backbone of patent law: \u201cwhen someone else uses [something that has already been patented]\u2014whether intentionally or unintentionally\u2014they owe a reasonable royalty.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0It is not relevant, in the legal sense, whether the original inventor actually succeeded in \u201ccommercializing the invention<\/a>.\u201d
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Saturday, February 9, 2013 by Agnieszka Zmuda On Tuesday, February 5, Fish and Richardson, on behalf of Rembrandt Social Media LP, sued Facebook and AddThis for patent infringement.\u00a0 The complaint identifies the two patents in question as U.S. Patent No. 6,415,316 and No. 6,289,362.\u00a0 Both of these were issued over 10 years ago to a …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7629,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions\/7629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}