Santorum, Romney, Gingrich, and 1000 others on the hook for patent infringement?

I draft this post with minimal comment because I don’t know what to make of this complaint: EveryMD v. Rick Santorum et al.  It’s short enough (six pages) that you can read the entire thing for yourself in less than five minutes.

In sum, EveryMD is suing Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and several thousand other John Does in the Central District of California for infringement of EveryMD’s patents.

I would guess that EveryMD’s actual target is Facebook, and that this is meant to put pressure on Facebook for settlement purposes, but that’s just a guess.  It appears that Facebook has at least one of EveryMD’s patents in reexamination, and rejected at least one EveryMD offer to license its patents.

Here are links to the patents recited in the complaint (at Google Patents):

U.S. Patent No. 6,671,714

U.S. Patent No. 7,644,122