Facebook Hit With Patent Suit Over Data Compression Tech

Facebook Inc.'s high-speed data compression technology is the target of a patent infringement lawsuit.

Realtime Data LLC, which makes data compression and storage hardware, claims Facebook’s Zstandard compression algorithm infringes its three patents on accelerated data storage and retrieval.

The lawsuit, filed June 5 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, could threaten Facebook’s algorithm that compresses data, such as text and video, into digital packets at a fast speed. Facebook rolled out the algorithm in 2016 as a faster alternative to older technology behind the Zip file data compression format.

Facebook shared the algorithm freely so ...