Kootol sends notice to tech majors over patent

BANGALORE, INDIA: Indian IT company Kootol Software Ltd. has sent legal notice to several companies for violating the patent on the core technology they are using for their services and products.

In an official statement released on Friday, the company stated that the patent application filed in the U.S. with application number 11/995,343, covered core messaging, publication and real-time searching technology.

The companies that have been sent a notice by Kootol are Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Apple, Bharti Airtel, Webaroo Technology (India) Pvt. Ltd., Amazon, AOL, Nokia, Bebo Inc., ExactTarget Inc., Ford Motor, Foursquare Inc., IBM, Linkedin, MySpace, NING Inc., Research In Motion Inc., Quora Inc., Salesforce.com Inc., Seesmic Inc., Siemens Enterprise Communications Inc., Sina.com Technology Co. Ltd., StatusNet Inc., PopBox Inc., Twitpic Inc., Peek Inc., The Iconfactory Inc., Ubermedia Inc., Yammer Inc., Facebook and Twitter, the release added.

“In addition to the above companies, we are also in process of sending informative notice to several other companies and developers, who are using our technology, to convey them to examine and settle the matter,” stated Kootol in the release, “We also welcome all the companies and developers for the licensing.”

According to the statement, the company had entered into an exclusive patent license agreement with Yogesh Rathod in respect of US Patent Application No. 11/995,343, titled "A Method and System for Communication, Advertising, Searching, Sharing and Dynamically Providing a Journal Feed".

“The corresponding patent has also been filed in India, Canada and Europe (EPO). This exclusive license agreement is for the one of the embodiment (part) of the patent, which allows exclusive patent license rights to the company for a unique core technology providing a dynamic and real-time communication technology,” it added.

Kootol has also expressed concern that the said companies might violate its intellectual property by using it for their websites, networks, applications, services, platforms, operating systems and devices. The company is said to be in the process of examining this position and the purpose of serving the notice is intended to bring the fact to the attention of the said companies at an early stage, so that they get an opportunity to examine the matter.