RNC sues Google over email spam filters
The Republican National Committee (RNC) today sued Google over two patents that it claims Google patented last year.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) today sued Google over two patents that it claims Google patented last year.
These patents cover “an electronic content rating system (EERS) for content available on the Internet, including a method and apparatus for rating the content according to ratings received by the user prior to the rating being received by the user,” according to the complaint.
The lawsuit by the RNC seeks a permanent injunction to remove search engine results that appear in Google’s search engine and an accounting for damages. If the case is resolved against Google, the RNC plans to request that the court require Google to remove the infringing search results.
The lawsuit also seeks damages for copyright infringement and unfair competition.
If Google was to be found liable for patent infringement, RNC lawyers, including two experts in the field of telecommunications law, said they would seek attorney fees as a reasonable royalty.
“By patenting what amounts to an indexing and filtering system for the vast majority of Internet search results, Google is infringing on the RNC’s copyrighted material. In addition, its business strategy and business process, as described in their business model, would have been infringed if this patent had been in effect,” the suit said.
The suit is the result of an earlier lawsuit filed by the RNC against Google over privacy issues.
“We’re suing Google over two of its patents covering the search engine industry and the Internet itself,” RNC Chairman Michael Steele said in an interview. “These patents are very much at the heart of Google’s business strategy and business process in recent years. We are suing the company to protect our right to market our ideas through the use of copyrighted information in our search results.”
A search of the RNC’s website or of Google’s Web site for the two patents brings up many articles highlighting the issues involved in the two patents.
“I have to say that they’re not exactly clear,” Steele said of the patents. “On the one hand they talk about’search,’ but then they talk about ‘content rating.’ It’s not clear what they mean by it.”
The RNC has previously accused Google of infringing on two of its patents, which allow it to place a link in the search engine results that says,