LONDONDERRY, N.H., June 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Over a year into patent litigation, IBM, and its subsidiary, Kenexa, continue an infringement lawsuit in an effort to break HireAbility, according to its CEO, Steve Kenda.

“IBM claims that a piece of paper acquired via acquisition, with a diagram from 1997 that, amongst dozens of boxes and arrows, depicts a small box that says ‘data extractor’ really means ‘resume parser'”, said Kenda. He added, “After 13 years and millions of dollars in development invested by HireAbility, IBM would very much like to see a small company that has developed a subset of natural language processing fall into their hands on the cheap.”

Patent litigation is very expensive and places a heavy burden on small defendants, particularly in lost management time and in damage to potential client relationships. “They can’t buy us, as we’re not for sale, so instead they try to wrestle our technology away from us under the confusing ‘business process’ patents still burdening the PTO and stifling innovation,” according to Kenda.

“IBM recently acquired Kenexa in response to Oracle’s acquisition of Taleo, part of an ongoing consolidation in the Human Resource space,” said Kenda. He added, “IBM is now trying to justify the price of the assets purchased, including the value Kenexa put on this arcane and archaic patent acquired from BrassRing.”

Kenda continued, “We’ll see if President Obama’s order last week to the PTO requiring companies to be more specific about exactly what their patent covers, particularly in the context of software, has any chops. We understand that the administration has told the patent office to tighten scrutiny of overly broad patent claims like IBM/Kenexa’s.”

A trade group known as The Business Software Alliance, which represents large software companies, is urging caution, “Which should concern all of my fellow small software providers,” said Kenda. “When members like IBM express dismay at some of the proposals, saying they could themselves stifle innovation, we at HireAbility are not surprised, given their own troll behavior.”

Since 1999, HireAbility.com‘s software and services have improved talent acquisition, cut recruitment costs, and improved marketing ROI. Its ALEX parsing/extraction software processes and converts the world’s CVs/resumes and job orders into XML solutions for job sites, Applicant Tracking Systems, and HR Information Systems. We are privately held and based in Londonderry, New Hampshire.

Contact: Steve Kenda
skenda@hireability.com
603.432.6653×113

SOURCE HireAbility