Filing a patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook had a happy ending for WhoGlue, a "relationship-management-software developer" recently acquired by the social networking giant.
WhoGlue sued Facebook in September 2009 for infringment of U.S. Patent No. 7,246,164, which was awarded to WhoGlue in 2007 for a “Distributed personal relationship information management system and methods.”
Two years later, the suit has not only been settled, but Facebook acquired WhoGlue Inc. last month.
"It’s not typically how you introduce yourself to someone, to serve them with papers," says WhoGlue's founder Jason Hardebeck, who added that contrary to their portrayal in the movie The Social Network, the Facebook folks turned out to be "really good guys."
Hardebeck was even able to buy back some of his company's assets and trademarks from Facebook and formed a new company, WhoGlue LLC, which can continue to serve its client base independent from Facebook.
Don't you just love a happy ending? It's unusual enough in this business that we thought it was worth blogging about.