Facebook sues Phoenix Media
Global social networking site Facebook Inc. is suing the Phoenix Media/Communications, which owns The Boston Phoenix and WFNX-FM 101.7, for allegedly infringing on two patents they say help the media company manage content online.
In a complaint filed today in US District Court in Boston, Facebook alleges that the Boston-based media company and its People2People Group, Tele-Publishing, and FNX are using features such as "band guide" on the newspaper's website and an online music player at the radio station that both infringe on patents, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The complaint comes a year after Phoenix Media first filed a suit against the California-based social network company and complained that it violated a patent related to setting up online personal profile pages.
That suit alleged that Facebook's "computer network and method of creating and sharing a personal page" is covered by one or more claims of a patent issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office on June 26, 2001, to Tele-Publishing Inc., a division of the Phoenix company.
Facebook press representative did not immediately respond to inquiries this afternoon.
Daniel Gleason, an attorney representing the Phoenix, did not want to immediately comment on the countersuit. In regards to the initial suit, he said: "We do consider this is a very important case. The patent in suit addresses fundamental aspects in our view of how the Facebook system functions."
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