Top Republican Presidential Candidates sued for their allegedly infringing use of Facebook

In what appears to be a politically-motivated and/or attention-seeking stunt, the patentee of two web patents has sued Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich (and a 1,000 Does to be named later from amongst the millions of Facebook users). The complaint alleges that the defendants (and Facebook) infringe the claims of US7,644,122 through their use of Facebook’s business accounts. The complaint appears to be frivolous, at first blush, but may cause some turmoil in the campaigns of the named politicians. Incidentally, Facebook initiated an inter partes reexamination of the ‘122 patent in 2010 (95/001,411), after being approached by the patentee. The reexamination is in progress having gone through a few rounds between the patentee, PTO and the requester (Facebook).