Facebook stands defiant as US publisher files lawsuit

Social Media

Darren Davidson

October 09, 2009

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Facebook stands defiant as US publisher files lawsuit

LONDON - Facebook has angrily dismissed allegations made in a US lawsuit filed by publisher Phoenix Media, in which the social networking website is accused of violating a patent for creating online personal profile pages.

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook will fight the new lawsuit

A division of the Phoenix company's People2People Group called Tele-Publishing filed the complaint in a US District Court this week.

The action alleges that Facebook's computer network and method of creating and sharing a personal page is covered by one or more patents issued by the company in 2001.

The company, which provides multimedia personal and dating services ads to 200 newspapers and broadcasters nationally, says the patent includes an online template and graphics for building a personal web page. It is not known what the company is seeking in terms of damages.

However, a spokeswoman for Facebook hit back, and told Revolution: "This suit is without merit, and we will fight it vigorously.''

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