Rackspace sues two firms over patents

Rackspace Hosting Inc. has sued two firms in San Antonio federal court, accusing them of breaking an agreement not to slap Rackspace with a lawsuit without notice.

The complaint, filed earlier this month, is the latest example of the hard line the San Antonio cloud-computing and Web-hosting company is taking against firms it deems “patent trolls.” These are businesses that collect patents and sue other companies over alleged infringement, but don't actually make any products of their own.

Rackspace also is asking the court to pre-emptively rule that it hasn't violated the three patents held by Parallel Iron LLC, one of the two firms it is suing. Dallas-based IP Navigation Group LLC is the other.

“It's kind of a man-bites-dog story,” said Daniel Nazer, an attorney who tracks patent issues for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco, Calif.-based group that advocates for consumers and privacy on the Internet.

Enforcing patents starts with firms alleging the infringement and then filing suit. Because they rely on numerous patents, tech firms are especially vulnerable to this kind of litigation. But Rackspace's assertion that Parallel Iron violated their agreement to provide notice before suing gave Rackspace the opportunity to hit back hard.