http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1...9290698,00.htm

Google faces a US federal patent infringement lawsuit by Northeastern University over technology used in its core web-search system, according to legal papers filed last week

WTF? F meaning fudge, of course.

The case centres on US patent number 5,694,593, entitled "Distributed Computer Database System and Method", which was invented by Kenneth Baclawski, an associate professor in Northeastern's computer science department.

SQL Server 97 was a scalable, distributed database system. I'm sure whatever version of Oracle was too. It ain't that unique.