District Court Judge Orders Facebook To Reveal Source Code In Patent Dispute

Facebook’s legal woes just won’t stop coming. Last November a company called Leader Technologies, which makes business communcation tools, filed suit against Facebook alleging that the social network had infringed on a patent that “relates to a method and system for the management and storage of electronic information.” The case is still ongoing, and it sounds like it has some legs — earlier this week Facebook was ordered by a Magistrate Judge from the District of Delaware’s District Court to give Leader Technologies access to its entire source code. As reported at Law360, Facebook has until the end of this week to hand over a hierarchical map of the source, and has until August 21st to share its entire codebase with the company.

Of course, Facebook is going to fight tooth and nail against this, and is sure to appeal the ruling.

Facebook has given us the following statement regarding the case:

While we respect the magistrate judge’s opinion, we disagree with it on this point and plan to appeal. Generally, this suit is without merit and we will continue to fight it aggressively.

This isn’t the only legal battle Facebook is facing. It’s currently being sued by Power.com over issues related to data portability, as well as by multiple advertisers alleging click fraud.

You can view Leader Tech’s request to have Facebook reveal its code below:
http://viewer.docstoc.com/
Leader-v-FacebookLetterRequestingSourceCode-posted30-Jul-2009_2_

Thanks to Aditi Tuteja for the tip.