Trial Underway in Patent Case Against Facebook

A civil trial between Rembrandt Social Media and Facebook is officially underway in Virginia's federal court. The lawsuit alleges that Dutch computer programmer Joannes Van Der Meer developed and patented methods for running a web-based personal diary, related to his defunct "Surfbook" website, before Facebook came into existence. Facebook had fought for over a year to keep the case from getting to a jury, arguing that the patents should have never been issued to Van Der Meer.