Northern Light, a Cambridge, Mass., search and database classification specialist, is returning as an independent company.
The move comes after former CEO C. David Seuss bought the assets from Divine Inc. for $81,000 at a recent bankruptcy auction.
After the acquisition, Seuss contacted users of the firm’s market research portal product and assured them that customer support would improve. He is also calling former employees to restaff the company.
Seuss plans to market the previously unreleased enterprise search engine, which features Northern Light’s taxonomy and classification tool and uses the company’s patented clustering technology.
It’s unclear what will become of Northern Light’s Web search engine, which won numerous accolades but was not a business success.
Seuss did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
In a statement he said, “We have started discussions with interested parties about ideas for new approaches to delivering on the promise of Web searching, ideas that represent a collaboration between others who have done innovative work and Northern Light.”
Northern Light started as a private, venture-backed firm. In early 2002, it sold to Divine, a Chicago incubator-turned-software company which was unable to cobble together its acquisitions into a workable structure.
Divine filed for bankruptcy protection in February of this year.