Mountain View, California — Not a single day goes by when the global search engine giant is factually or falsely involved in some or the other violations. In the latest turn of events Google is being sued for patent infringement by a company called buySAFE, a company which offers a safe-shopping service to online retailers and their customers, TechCrunch reports.
In its complaint, buySAFE says that it is the ‘first company to address the concerns of online shoppers by offering third-party authentication and transactional guarantees for Internet retailers,’ which the company says is unique and protected by patent law.
BuySAFE alleges that Google maliciously infringed on a patent it owns by preparing the launch of a similar service called Google Trusted Stores, and also claims Google has “gone to great lengths to obtain proprietary business information” and is pushing buySAFE customers to switch.
According to Buysafe, Google’s Trusted Stores program is mocked up after Buysafe and has been developed using the intelligence of an executive previously engaged with Buysafe partner, which held “extensive” discussions with Buysafe and obtained substantial business information as a result.
“Because there is significant consumer demand for such authentication and guarantees, numerous Internet retailers have purchased BuySafe’s services and offer BuySafe’s transactional guarantees without cost to the consumers who make purchases on their websites,” the complaint goes on to say. “It is well-known within the Internet retailer community that BuySafe’s transaction guarantee services are patented.”
According to the lawsuit, since 2006 Google had explored ways to partner with buySAFE. buySAFE eventually shelved those talks, but, says the suit, those discussions plus Google’s 2010 recruitment of the then-COO of a buySAFE client company granted Google enough proprietary information to launch its own copycat service.
“The Google Trusted Store stamp is granted to those e-commerce sites that demonstrate a track record of on-time shipping and excellent customer support,” said Tom Fallows, a Group Product Manager on Google’s Commerce team. When visiting a qualifying store, shoppers can hover over the Google Trusted Store badge and see metrics on the store’s shipping and customer service performance, he added.
In October, Google unfurled a pilot program for Google Trusted Stores, providing a similar service. And yet, the lawsuit goes on to accuse Google of scheduling its launch of Trusted Stores to “impede buySAFE’s effort to raise additional capital,” as well as giving retailers that participate in Trusted Stores a higher search ranking and telling retailers they could use either Trusted Stores or buySAFE, but not both.
Buysafe’s claims are wrapped by a patent the company filed in 2003 and received in early 2010. Entitled “Safe transaction guarantee” the document describes safe transactions without the use of escrow or bond procedures.
Another interesting side of this tragic affair, the complaint says, Google had employees visit BuySafe.com on numerous occasions to investigate its business, methods and systems, claiming to have discovered a tremendous amount of visits to buysafe.com from Google IP addresses since at least 2009.
This, of course, comes at a time when Google is drawing the watchful government eye with regards to its competitive practices. Buysafe is asking to be awarded triple damages as well as a ruling that will prevent Google from using and fully rolling out Trusted Stores.
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