March 14, 2011 - A software company called MasterObjects sued Amazon and Google last week, claiming infringement of its patent on predictive search technology.
MasterObjects alleges that Amazon's "search suggestions" - in which other possible search terms are suggested when a user begins typing in the search field - infringes the patent, and sued Google on March 11 in a complaint citing the same patent. Similar predictive technology is also used by Bing, Yahoo and many other companies.
Both the Amazon and Google cases were filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.