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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Docs’ Website Sues Santorum, Romney & Newt

LOS ANGELES (CN) - A website for doctors and patients claims the top three Republican presidential candidates - Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich - are violating its patents on their Facebook pages.

EveryMD sued the three candidates, but not Facebook, in Federal Court.

Los Angeles-based EveryMD describes itself as a partnership of Frank Weyer and Troy Javaher, which has run the everymd.com website since 2001.

The website "provides home pages for over 300,000 member doctors and allows patients to obtain information about, send messages to, and submit comments about those doctors via the doctors' individual home pages," according to the complaint.

EveryMD claims it owns two patents, and has submitted other patent applications, for its "Method, Apparatus and Business System for Online Communications with Online and Offline Recipients."

The patents cover "a novel method for creating individual home pages for members of [sic, recte: or(?)] a group of members that contain controls for sending messages to and for submitting comments about the members," the complaint states.

EveryMD claims that Facebook uses its '122 patent to create Facebook pages for its members. It claims that it offered to sell the '122 patent to Facebook in 2001, but Facebook refused, and its offer has expired.

It claims that Facebook's use of the '122 patent is unauthorized, and "leaves holders of Facebook business accounts liable for infringement of the '122 patent for unauthorized commercial use of Facebook pages produced by Facebook using the method of the '122 patent."

EveryMD claims that none of the defendants accepted its "voluntary licensing program" last year, for which it asked $500 per business account. It claims that the candidates and violating its patent and doing it irreparable harm.

It seeks an injunction and treble damages for patent infringement.

EveryMD is represented by attorney/plaintiff Frank Weyer, of TechCoastLaw.

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