Northeastern University Sues Google Over Index Database Design

Northeastern sues Google over patent from The Boston Globe reports that Northeastern University and a company founded by a Northeastern professor, Kenneth P. Baclawski, is suing Google for patent infringement. The issue at hand in this case is that Northeastern has patented a method of storing database queries back in 1997. It wasn’t until about […]

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Northeastern sues Google over patent from The Boston Globe reports that Northeastern University and a company founded by a Northeastern professor, Kenneth P. Baclawski, is suing Google for patent infringement.

The issue at hand in this case is that Northeastern has patented a method of storing database queries back in 1997. It wasn’t until about two years ago that Northeastern learned that Google was potentially infringing on that patent. It wasn’t for another couple years that Northeastern was able to find lawyers that would take the case on a contingency basis.


The complaint was filed on November 6th at Eastern District of Texas–the U.S. court. You can find the PDF of the complaint over here, as well as the copy of the patent and the court docket, thanks to ResourceShelf.

In addition, you can read about how Microsoft does index partitioning in their search index via SEO By The Sea.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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