Facebook sued by inventor of Priceline.com

With some sort of holiday spirit, lawsuits are-a-plenty; as we know, Facebook is no stranger to legal battles. Just in time for Thanksgiving recess, Bloomberg Businessweek is reporting that one of the inventors behind the popular Priceline.com website is taking the good fight to everyone"s favorite social networking giant. Jay S. Walker, the current chairman of Walker Digital LLC, has accused Facebook of "misappropriating an invention that helps computer users establish anonymous communications." Facebook has responded that they believe the lawsuit to be "frivolous" and have vowed to "fight it vigorously."

It seems that this battle will be fought regarding some form of user privacy, though it"s unclear how the patent directly pertains to that. According to the lawsuit, Walker claims that three of his company"s employees created a system that gives users a better way to control the release of their personal information. No further information is given, but the case is being fought over patent number 5,884,271. It seems like the patent specifically deals with credit card transactions. It will be interesting to see if the case ends up having holding water in court. Surely Facebook"s legal team has everything under control.

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