WILMINGTON, Del. – Personalized internet search engine patent holder Personalized User Model, L.L.P, (PUM) of New York filed a lawsuit against Google in the U.S. District Court in Delaware. The lawsuit alleges that Google willfully infringed two patents owned by PUM that cover aspects of Google’s valuable personalized user search technology.
This case is about protecting small inventors, who have worked hard to create valuable intellectual property, from big corporations. “Large companies cannot be allowed to out muscle small inventors and misappropriate their valuable works,” said PUM attorney Marc S. Friedman of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, LLP. “We believe the Court will hold Google accountable for its willful infringement of Personalized User Model’s very valuable patents,” Friedman added.
In the lawsuit, PUM contends that Google’s use of personalized user search technology infringes two PUM patents that were issued in 2005 and 2008. Official U.S. Patent & Trademark Office documents show that Google was well-aware of PUM’s 2005 patent when its own patent application covering personalized user search technology was rejected by the U.S. Patent Office because of PUM’s patent.
“Google is being sued for patent infringement for one reason – it is using PUM’s technology and has benefited greatly from it,” said Roy Twersky, an owner of PUM and one of the original inventors.
In January and February of 2008, PUM issued letters to Google offering to enter into a license arrangement so that Google could continue to use the PUM patented technology. Google failed to reply to these letters.
“We did not go looking for this lawsuit, but Google’s willful infringement really left us no other choice,” Friedman said.
Roy Twersky, one of the inventors, has over 15 years experience in (business-to-business) technology and venture capital. He received his MBA from the Wharton School of Business and his undergraduate degree in economics and mathematics magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University.
A co-inventor, Dr. Yochai Konig, has over 15 years experience in research and development of machine learning, statistical pattern recognition, speech recognition and speaker verification technologies. While at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), he created and developed speech recognition technology as part of a Department of Defense project. He received his PhD in computer science from University of California, Berkeley and received his BSc in computer engineering summa cum laude from the Technion in Haifa, Israel.
Mr. Twersky and Dr. Konig are employed by Utopy, a voice recognition and speech mining technology company located in San Francisco. They are owners of PUM, a limited liability partnership with offices in New York City, which is an assignee of the patents-in-suit.
