Companies accused of infringing on patents related to the tracking of users on the Web LONDON – BTG PLC, a London-based firm that focuses on intellectual property and technology commercialization, said Wednesday that it has filed suit against Amazon.com Inc., Barnesandnoble.com LLC and two other Internet companies for infringing on patents related to the tracking of users on the Web.The suit, filed in the U.S. Federal Court in Delaware, alleges that the companies use BTG’s patented technology as part of their online marketing programs. The suit asks for unspecified damages for past infringement and injunctions against future use of the technology.BTG has charged Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com, online movie rental service Netflix Inc. and shopping site Overstock.com Inc. with infringing U.S. patent number 5,717,860. Additionally, it charged Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com with infringing U.S. patent number 5,712,979. Both patents relate to technology that enables the tracking of users between Web sites and were acquired by BTG from personalized Web information provider Infonautics Corp. in 2002. BTG spokesman Andy Burrows said that the company researched the patents before purchasing them and was aware that the technology was used by a number of companies. It made efforts to persuade the companies to license or buy the technology before it filed suit, he said.“Litigation is part and parcel of doing business in the IP (intellectual property) technology spectrum,” Burrows said. He added, however, that “the floor was still open to reach commercial settlement.”The complaint against the four companies was filed Tuesday but BTG has not yet heard from the defendants, Burrows said. A spokeswoman for Amazon in the U.K. said that the company does not comment on pending litigation. Representatives for Barnesandnoble.com, Netflix and Overstock.com, all based in the U.S., weren’t immediately available to comment early Wednesday.Earlier this year BTG filed suit against Microsoft Corp. and Apple Computer Inc. for a patent related to Web-enabled software update technologies. Although the company is prepared to engage in litigation, BTG gets the majority of its income from licensing and royalty revenue, Burrows said. BTG holds some 3,500 patents in its portfolio and brought in revenue of around £50 million (US$90 million) in the last full year, Burrows said.Gary Barnett, IT research director at consulting company Ovum Ltd., said that he has noticed an uptick in IP lawsuits in the tech sector recently. “They have become more important because people have run out of new ideas and they have started looking at old ideas and how to exploit them,” Barnett said. He added that there are fewer suits in periods of sector expansion and innovation.Patent lawsuits are can prove lucrative, however. Earlier this year chipmaker Intel Corp. agreed to pay Intergraph Corp. $225 million to settle a patent suit over a parallel instruction computing technology. And last year, eBay Inc. was ordered to pay $35 million for infringing a patent related to online auctions.Although Burrows declined to say how much money BTG is seeking in its latest patent suit, he said that the value of the patents were “significant” to the company’s operations. REFERENCES: BTG claims patent on application downloading, Jun. 15, 2004 EBay to fight $35 million patent judgment, May 28, 2003 Technology Industry