Tumbleweed Sues eUniverse for Patent Infringement

Content management software firm Tumbleweed Communications Corp. has sued online greeting card service eUniverse, Inc. for alleged patent infringements.

Redwood City-based Tumbleweed, a B2B firm specializing in email services for business communications, accused eUniverse of infringing on its U.S. Patent No. 6,192,407 patent, which relates to the Private Trackable URLs for direct document delivery.

Officials at eUniverse, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, could not be reached for comment.

The suit comes just days after Tumbleweed scored deals with eUniverse competitors American Greetings Corp. and privately held Hallmark Cards, Inc. for use of the trackable URL technology.

Tumbleweed said the technology allows for delivery of greeting cards over the Internet. It also helps online content providers to bind content to a digital identity, enabling a host of applications such as online marketing and security content delivery.