A US firm specialising in data compression has filed lawsuits against a host of investment banks, stock exchanges and financial news and data outfits, accusing them of patent infringement.
RealTime Data has filed three separate claims in Texas Eastern District Court accusing firms such as Goldman Sachs, Thomson Reuters and Nyse Euronext of infringing US patents covering data compression methods and systems.
Says the complaint against banks: "On information and belief, Defendants have been and are, within this Judicial District, State, and elsewhere, using one or more data compressions products and/or systems manufactured, designed, produced, sold and/or offered for sale without license or authorization from Plaintiff Realtime Data."
Says the abstract for one of the patents, 6624761: "Systems and methods for providing fast and efficient data compression using a combination of content independent data compression and content dependent data compression."
Realtime Data is seeking damages, costs and a permanent injunction against the defendants to stop them using or selling products infringing the patents.
Banks targeted by RealTime include Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, HSBC Bank USA, JP Morgan Chase & Co and SWS Group. The exchanges named as defendants are CME Group, Bats Trading, International Securities Exchange, Nasdaq OMX and Nyse Euronext. In addition, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, Factset Research Systems, Interactive Data and Penson Worldwide are all listed.