The Register

...the chairman and CEO of AltaVista's parent company, CMGI, David Wetherell ... said the company would be pursuing its search engine patents and we can expect lawsuits coming this quarter.

Of course, the intended coup of the Internet search engine market comes in the form of some lovely management speak: "Even though AltaVista's doing well in the advertising space, we just think that in order to really ensure strong growth they ought to leverage their position in search licensing to a greater extent." ... "We believe that virtually everyone out there who indexes the Web is in violation of at least several of those key patents."

This certainly threatens to eclipse the furore that surrounded Amazon's 'abuse' of patents! Better start looking for prior art...