U.S. university professor sues Google for patent infringment

Boston (MA) - A professor at Northeastern University has filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that the site’s entire search infrastructure infringes on a patent he owns.

Computer science professor Kenneth Baclawski claims he is the co-founder of a patent that describes a query results method involving search partitions that are all processed by different computers. He claims this is the basis of Google’s search algorithm.

The patent is actually owned by Northeastern University and is under the name "Jarg", a local company in Massachusetts. Baclawski is the co-founder of the patent, though, and has licensing rights to it from the university.

Google has gone on record as saying that the lawsuit is "without merit". The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, which specializes in patent infringement suits.