Googleis fighting apatent battleafter a university
claimed the search giant is using its technology to power its
search engine platform.
Northeastern University in the US filed its claim for damages
and royalty payments last year, and Google has now counterclaimed
saying the patent in question should be made invalid because of
prior art.
The patent in dispute describes a distributed database system
that breaks queries into fragments and distributes them to multiple
computers in a network, to get faster search results.
Northeastern University claims Google uses this system to power
its search engine.
The claim says Kenneth Baclawski, an associate professor at
Northeastern, invented the system, and that the system is licensed
exclusively to search technology firm Jarg. Baclawski is a founder
of Jarg.