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21 August 2017Patents

Wal-Mart sued over ‘web crawler’ software

Wal-Mart has been sued by a technology company over software that allows users to quickly search the internet through web-crawler technology.

The complaint was filed by Spider Search Analytics (SSA) at the US District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, Fayette Division on Friday, August 18.

It accused Wal-Mart of patent infringement relating to the use of web-crawler software, which allows a device to quickly search through thousands of pages on the internet.

Web-crawler software is commonly used in search engines. It can also be used to scan thousands of websites to ensure prices are being kept in line with those of competitors.

SSA accused Wal-Mart of infringing its US patent number 7,454,430, relating to a specific web crawling software that searches, checks facts and stores the facts in a repository.

“Defendant uses a web crawler that is capable of crawling any website in order to crawl and scrape data for their clients,” the complaint read.

It added that the software was used “without permission or a licence”.

SSA is seeking monetary damages, injunctive relief, and a jury trial.

A search of the PACER database, which provides access to US court records, shows that this is the 24th time Wal-Mart has been sued for IP infringement in 2017.

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