August 13th, 2008
Patent suit targets company being acquired by Microsoft
On the surface, the latest patent lawsuit to hit the court systems looks like many of the others: allegations of infringement, ongoing unauthorized use and so on. But there’s a little bit of a twist to this one. DATallegro, the company that reportedly is doing such infringing, is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft - and it doesn’t look like the guy who says he invented the technology is in line to cash in from the Microsoft acquisition.
The suit, filed today in U.S. District court in San Diego, claims that Cary A. Jardin patented a database technology entitled “System and Method for Generating and Processing Results Data in a Distributed System” while employed by a company called XPrime. The defendant, Stuart O. Frost, was the chief executive of XPrime for a brief period and, as such, “had access to confidential information and documents from Jardin and other XPrime employees,” according to the suit.
After leaving XPrime, Frost founded Datallegro where he “attempted to convert Jardin’s inventions to his own” by filing patent applications similar to Jardin’s. The suit reads, in part:
At Datallegro, defendant Frost used and incorporated Jardin’s intellectual property into Datallegro’s products. These actions were taken to benefit both defendant Frost and his newly-formed company, defendant Datallegro. Defendants’ unauthorized use of Jardin’s intellectual property continues to this day.
Microsoft’s purchase of DATallegro is expected to “extend the capabilities of Microsoft’s mission critical platform,” the company said when it announced the acquisition last month. DATAllegro will work alongside other software to manage data and give the software giant one more thing to sell to the enterprise. DATAllegro specializes in large-volume, high-performance data warehouses and counts customers in the retail, telecommunications and manufacturing industries.
The suit did not name Microsoft but did note that Jardin is seeking an injunction against “…Datallegro’s officers, directors, agents, servants, employees, attorneys, and all others acting under, by or through them, from directly infringing, contributorily infringing, and inducing the infringement” of Jardin’s patent.
Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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