In autumn 2000 TechSearch Inc, a company specialising on acquiring and exploiting patents, sued Gregory Aharonian, a vocal critic of "bad patents" owned by TechSearch, for alleged infringement of one of these "bad patents", the Rozmanith patent on compressing data transmitted from web servers. They also accused Aharonian of slandering TechSearch, the patent office and the United States government. But they failed to point out how Aharonian had infringed on their patent. Apparently anyone who operates a web server infringes, and it is up to TechSearch to select victims. Aharonian is the first individual Linux user to be sued for patent infringement.

US 5,253,341

Techsearch attacks Aharonian on Rozmanith patent