eHarmony Attempts to Stop Patent Suit by eRecruitment

eHarmony recently received a complaint in a letter from eRecruitment which stated that the dating site is infringing on their patents. eRecruitment is a job search site based in the United Kingdom that hold several patents which deal with classifying and indexing a website's members personal information. In the letter, eRecruitment told eHarmony to either shut down their dating site or start paying licensing fees.

eHarmony’s attorneys from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe asked Judge Paul Friedman at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to declare that the company had not infringed on patents owned by eRecruitment.

In my opinion this looks like someone who just wants to make a quick buck off of eHarmony. In the unlikely case that eRecruitment ends up successfully suing eHarmony, then all dating sites would be in trouble. Of course we have seen frivolous claims like this before. I forget who the company was but, there was one a few years ago that was attempting to sue any website who streamed video over the internet.

For more on the story, read The Blog of LegalTimes.