MasterObjects, which makes search technology, is taking legal action against software giant Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) for alleged patent infringement.
MasterObjects claims to hold a patent for technology that provides progressive search information as the user types in his or her query, a feature that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all provide in their search engines.
The patent, entitled, “System and method for utilizing asynchronous client server communication objects,” is registered as U.S. patent number 7,752,326. MasterObjects filed its suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, last week.
“Using asynchronous communications technology, as the user typed more characters, the results in the drop-down box would change dynamically, becoming increasingly relevant as the string of characters lengthened,” the suit states, describing the technology.