Another suit involving allegations of ex-employee IP theft

Jonathan Sidener of the San Diego Union-Tribune (not to be confused with stem cell cheerleader Terri Somers) notes that Cary Jardin filed a suit on 12 August 2008 against Stuart Frost, a former chief executive of his company XPrime, contending that Stuart Frost took Xprime's ideas and used them to found a new company, Datallegro, in 2003.

Sidener notes two points:

#1. Datallegro is in the midst of being acquired by Microsoft. [One of Jardin's companies, IPivot, was sold to Intel.]

#2. The lawsuit against Frost was filed by Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, a class-action law firm that is branching out into patent litigation, and which was once run by William Lerach. Of firms branching INTO patent law and of Lerach, see the previous IPBiz post titled IP and PI: happy together? .

The story is an old one. There was a patent application arising out of Xprime, to which Frost had access. Xprime failed as a business, and there was some dispute about "who" owned "what". Sidener states: Frost incorporated the ideas in Jardin's [Xprime] patent application and used them in his own patent filing and in Datallegro's products. Frost's application was denied by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A lot of the expected actions are being taken. According to Frost's blog: "Given the prior art in this area, we're also considering asking the Patent Office to re-examine Jardin's patent."

Hmmm, blogs as news sources...

Also,

Jardin's patent US 6,671,810 is assigned to Intel, US 6,681,327 is assigned to Intel, US 6,766,354 is assigned to Intel, US 6,850,984 is assigned to Intel, and US 6,912,588 is assigned to Intel.

Jardin's US 7,177,874, titled System and method for generating and processing results data in a distributed system, is not listed as being assigned to Intel and has a first claim:

A method of processing a query command in a distributed computing system in which a plurality of database tables are stored on a plurality of nodes, different portions of at least one database table being stored on at least two of the nodes, the method comprising:
storing a first portion of a first database table and a first portion of a second database table on a first node, and storing a second portion of a first database table and a second portion of a second database table on a second node;
determining a join table definition in response to a query command, said join table definition identifying a subset of said first database table to include in executing said database query command;
generating a first join table from said first portion of said first database table in accordance with said join table definition, and generating a second join table from said second portion of said first database table in accordance with said join table definition;
transmitting said first join table to said second node, and transmitting said second join table to said first node; comparing said first portion of said second database table with said first join table, and comparing said second portion of said second database table with said second join table to generate a first intermediate results file; comparing said first portion of said second database table with said second join table, and comparing said second portion of said second database table with said first join table to generate a second intermediate results file; and
generating a final results file from said first intermediate results file and said second intermediate results file.

Of related cases:

This application is a continuation-in-part of, and claims priority to, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/345,811, filed Jan. 16, 2003 now abandoned and titled "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISTRIBUTED DATABASE PROCESSING IN A CLUSTERED ENVIRONMENT," and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/345,504, filed Jan. 16, 2003 now abandoned and titled "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR COOPERATIVE DATABASE ACCELERATION," which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties. This application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/807,816 titled "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR COOPERATIVE DATABASE ACCELERATION," U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/808,199 titled "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING IN A NODE ENVIRONMENT," U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/808,176 titled "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CONTROLLING PROCESSING IN A DISTRIBUTED SYSTEM," and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/808,175 titled "SHARED MEMORY ROUTER SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR NODE COMMUNICATION IN A DISTRIBUTED SYSTEM," which are filed on even date herewith and are all hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties.