Rich Fiscus
9 Dec 2011 2:16
PersonalWeb, a company based in Tyler, Texas, has filed patent infringement suits against a number of large tech companies, including Google, Amazon, VMWare, and NEC.
The company's location is notable only because Tyler, Texas has a reputation as the most friendly court in the US for patent lawsuits.
PersonalWeb is notably different from the typical company setting up an office in the East Texas town. In most cases those companies are non-practicing entities, more commonly referred to as patent trolls, who exist only to sue and produce no products of any kind.
While PersonalWeb has followed a path familiar to patent trolls in buying up patent portfolios from other companies, those patents are used in actual products, including StudyPods, an educational social networking platform currently deployed in Tyler, and an anti-piracy product called Global File System.
In fact, in their statement announcing the lawsuits PersonalWeb makes a point of mentioning both those products, begging the question of whether their sole purpose is to create a facade of legitimacy as a real tech company instead of a patent troll.
The patents PersonalWeb is accusing these companies of violating deal with, "cloud computing, distributed search engine file systems, and content addressable storage." They certainly seem like the typical vague patents you see patent trolls sue over regularly.
That certainly doesn't mean their suits will be unsuccessful, or even that they won't be settled to avoid a potentially costly loss. Keep in mind, they would be argued in the same court where Microsoft was ordered to pay more than $200 million in damages for a minor feature in Word.