Dutch programmer Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer is suing Facebook over its ‘Like’ button. Well, a lot of people sue a lot of companies, so what’s the big deal you ask? Well, van Der Meer is actually dead.
He passed away in 2004, just as Facebook was beginning to take over the world. So, why is he suing now?
Van Der Meer was the founder of Surfbook, a social diary-type service where people could share stuff with friends and like things with a ‘like’ button. The lawsuit claims that Facebook “bears a remarkable resemblance, both in terms of its functionality and technical implementation, to the personal web page diary that Van Der Meer had invented years earlier.”
But the man is dead, right? Well, yes he is but his patents are still alive. Van Der Meer was awarded patents in 1998 for Surfbook which maybe include the “Like” button too.
Rembrandt Social Media, a patent-holding company, is the one that’ll be doing the suing but Van Der Meer’s widow and his colleagues will testify in the trial about the importance of his invention. Some times, people want credit for their work. And other times, patent holding companies want money for those people’s work. Even when they’re dead.
The average return rate in eCommerce is estimated at 17.6% for 2024. Nearly 1 in 5 products…
The Tech Panda takes a look at recent launches in the superfast field of Artificial…
The tech sector in India has been going from strength to strength in recent years.…
Experts are saying that organizations are inadvertently creating a new identity-centric attack surface through growing…
The Tech Panda takes a look at how India has been attracting foreign businesses from…
Patient records have long been a collection of handwritten notes, prescription slips, and test results,…