Best defense, good offense: Cambridge company sues Lycos before Lycos can sue it

Yes, silly, Lycos still exists, and it apparently holds some patents on basic search technology. ChoiceStream, a Cambridge company that sells software that lets Web sites make recommendations to visitors, today filed a federal lawsuit against the search pioneer, basically to head off the lawsuit it expects Lycos to file over its software.

By taking the offense, ChoiceStream was able to argue first that its algorithms don't violate any of four Lycos patents, and that even if they did, the patents are invalid, so Lycos should lay off both ChoiceStream and Blockbuster, which uses ChoiceStream's software. In its complaint, filed in US District Court in Boston, ChoiceStream says a similar lawsuit Lycos filed against Tivo, Netflix and Blockbuster in 2007, made it apprehensive a lawsuit was coming its way. The complaint does not specify why ChoiceStream thinks the Lycos patents are invalid.

ChoiceStream complaint.

Lycos patents:

• Multi-level mindpool system especially adapted to provide collaborative filter data for a large scale information filtering system
• Integrated collaborative/content-based filter structure employing selectively shared, content-based profile data to evaluate information entities in a massive information network
• Collaborative/adaptive search engine
• Information filter system and method for integrated content-based and collaborative/adaptive feedback queries