Google and Yahoo countersue Xerox in patent spat

Google and Yahoo have filed a countersuit against Xerox in an ongoing legal tussle concerning alleged infringement of registered search patents.

The counterclaim states that neither company had infringed two of Xerox's internet search patents, and cannot therefore be sued by Xerox, according to a Reuters report.

Xerox had sued Google and its YouTube subsidiary over a US Xerox patent referred to as a System for Automatically Generating Queries. The lawsuit states that search requests in AdSense and AdWords violate Xerox's automatically generating queries technology.

Yahoo is being sued for infringement of Xerox's Method and Apparatus for the Integration of Information and Knowledge patent in Y!Q Contextual Search, Yahoo Search Marketing and Yahoo Publisher Network.

Xerox believes that this patent is also being violated by Google Maps, Google Video and YouTube.

Xerox is seeking compensation and a ban on the use of the technologies.