Patent wars have hit cloud computing, as PersonalWeb is suing tech giants such as Google and Amazon over cloud tech infringements. PersonalWeb’s CEO is the founder of P2P application Morpheus and its non-executive chairman is the founder of file-sharing service Kazaa.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the case is being filed by PersonalWeb, which describes itself as owning “13 fundamental pending and issued patents.”
It claims that Google, YouTube, Amazon, EMC, VMware, Dropbox, NetApps, NEC and Caringo have used PersonalWeb’s patents within their cloud offerings, which involve content addressable storage and distributed search engine technologies.
Kevin Bermeister, PersonalWeb’s non-executive chairman and founder of Kazaa, and Michael Weiss, CEO and president of PersonalWeb, who also founded the Morpheus P2P application, both filed the case in the US District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.
“PersonalWeb protects its proprietary business applications and operations through a portfolio of patents that it owns, and we are actively pursuing licensing and participation in the operation of businesses that use these patents,” said Weiss in a statement.
The music industry previously sued Bermeister over pirated content shared over Kazaa and reached a settlement of more than US$100m. Bermeister has since focused on combatting online piracy with PersonalWeb’s Global File Registry.
This technology, which Bermeister and his team have been pitching to ISPs, can recognise pirated content and child pornography. It can offer legal alternatives for the piracy and a law-enforcement message for the child pornography. The company said the alleged infringed patents were used in this technology.
