Patent lawsuit filed against Walmart, Facebook, Disney

Patent lawsuit filed against Walmart, Facebook, DisneyAccording to a Reuters report, Eolas Technologies and the Regents of the University of California filed a patent lawsuit against Walmart, Facebook, and the Walt Disney Co., in the District Court for the Eastern District Court of Texas on Wednesday.

Going by the claims put forth in the patent-infringement lawsuit, the three bigwig companies have allegedly violated four patents - the '906, '985, '293 and '662 patents - which chiefly facilitate the hosting of embedded interactive applications by Internet browsers.

Despite the fact that not many details pertaining to the claims were available, the Reuters report revealed that the four patents which Facebook, Walmart, and Walt Disney have allegedly infringed related to interactive technology, including hypermedia display and interaction; and had been issued to the University of California, San Francisco, and the Texas-based Eolas Technologies, which is chaired by Michael Doyle.

As per a post on the Eolas website, the key objective for founding the company was to assist the University of California in commercializing patent technology, which included patents that had been developed by Doyle and his team during Doyle's stint at the University.

About the patent lawsuit, a University of California spokesman told Reuters that the University considered the patents to be public assets, and is seeking reimbursement of a fair value "when a third party exploits that university asset for profit."