Company that loves to sue sues Boston University for using a link-shortening service

A institution that claims it has a patent connected the thought of linking a fig entered successful an online container to a circumstantial nonfiction has acceptable its sights connected Boston University, claiming the school's usage of a nexus shortener is outrageous and deserving of punishment - oregon a ample capable colony to marque the lawsuit spell away.

In a suit filed contiguous successful US District Court successful Boston, Internet Media Interactive Corp. of Wilmington, DE alleges that BU's usage of a strategy successful which readers of immoderate of its online pages are directed to a Web leafage wherever they tin benignant successful a numerical codification to entree a circumstantial nonfiction violates a patent the institution owns - and which expired successful 2016.

The institution says it's seeking a declaration that BU was successful the incorrect and the awarding of "reasonable" royalties connected BU's practice, positive immoderate damages would marque BU deliberation doubly astir ever doing specified a atrocious happening again.

The institution has sued everybody from Barnes &;amp Noble to the Bunn-o-Matic Corp. (which churns retired java makers, not robot rabbits) - 85 companies and non-profit groups since 2012. The BU ailment appears to person utilized a fill-in-the-blanks template, due to the fact that it states:

Internet Media has the exclusive close to enforce and cod each past damages for infringement of the ‘835 Patent for the play starting six years anterior to the filing day of this suit (October 29, 2015) done the expiration day of the ‘835 Patent (August 30, 2016).

This would not beryllium the archetypal lawsuit wherever the institution fundamentally recycled a suit against 1 enactment against another. Last year, a justice overseeing the lawsuit the institution brought (and past dropped) against Shopify, Inc., wrote:

The Court is surely troubled by the evident deficiency of effort expended by Plaintiff successful putting unneurotic a respectable pleading successful this case. Recycling aged complaints without bothering to springiness a cautious reappraisal to region accusation unrelated to the existent suspect is not an due mode to litigate.

Ed. note: If "prior art" means anything, successful the mid-1990s, arsenic exertion of a trade-publication Web site, I helped make a strategy that fto visitors benignant a fig into a container to leap to a circumstantial nonfiction - respective years earlier the Patent Office granted the patent astatine question successful the suit. We utilized it done astatine slightest the archetypal mates of years of the caller millennium. We ne'er thought to effort to patent it due to the fact that it seemed similar specified an evident idea.

And a struggle of involvement note: The kidlet is presently a pupil successful a postgraduate programme astatine BU, though I person not consulted with anybody astatine BU astir this article.