The survivors of a Dutch programmer is suing Facebook for allegedly infringing on patents established long before anyone ever clicked on the mega-giant social network.  They say Facebook’s “like” and “share” functions are not original.   The family is seeking damages, plus interest, plus court costs.

The U.S. Patent office granted the patents to computer scientist Joannes Jozef Everardus Van Der Meer back in 2001 and 2002.  Van Der Meer had reserved the domain name “Surfbook.com”.  But he died in 2004 before ever making any of it a reality.

Facebook is so far refusing to comment.  But the lawsuit from the Van Der Meer family states, "Although Mark Zuckerberg did not start what became Facebook until 2003, it 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.” 

In 2012, Facebook acquired a patent that was originally granted to AOL which lists one of Van Der Meer’s patents as a reference.