Questions About Patents

Hey Everyone,

My partners and I are starting a business that will basically use the same kind of technology that match.com uses to match people. It has absolutely nothing to do with dating or matching people up based on personalities but it does match people looking for a specific search criteria. Looking into a patent search, I came across some patents listed by eHarmony and match.com that say something like this "an apparatus that uses data from one user to match data from at least one other user". Based on what I know about patents and these websites, they couldn't possibly patent the idea of searching data for matches and returning results. Perhaps they can patent their particular process or way of doing it but they certainly don't have a patent on the idea of matching people based on entered data do they? Any ideas on this? Since my business has nothing to do with anything these sites do I can't believe that they would be able to claim patent infringement. Also, there are 1000 other sites out there using the exact same methods and they are specifically focused on exactly what match.com and eHarmony are doing. I'm not an attorney but am I wrong here? Any helpful insights appreciated.

I'm not a lawyer and suggest you contact a patent attorney if you are really concerned.

I wouldn't be so quick to write it off, especially if your company has lots of assets and is an attractive target. You should read the patents in more detail since the name of the patent doesn't really matter and is often purposely designed to be generic. The claims are the important part and written in legalese. A patent attorney will be able to explain the claims ot you.

Amazon.com just paid Soverain Software $40 million to settle a lawsuit (c|net article) over several alleged patent infringements. Check out the description of one patent:That's been described as session management which you would imagine many shopping sites do.

Under the law if someone infringes on your patent, you have to take action or your patent will be invalidated.