Dutch programmer Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer is suing Facebook over its ‘Like’ button. Companies get sued all the time! Why do we care? Well, aside from having an A+ name, van Der Meer is actually… dead. He passed away in 2004, just as Facebook was beginning to take over the world. Why is he suing now? Van Der Meer was the founder of Surfbook, a social diary-type service where people could share stuff with friends and like things with a ‘like’ button. If that sounds a heckuva lot like some other site with book in its name, well, you know why lawsuits are being tossed around. The lawsuit claims that Facebook “bears a remarkable resemblance, both in terms of its functionality and technical implementation, to the personal web page diary that Van Der Meer had invented years earlier.”
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.