Surfbook was an early social networking service created by Dutch programmer Joannes Jozef Everardus van der Meer in the years prior to his death in June 2004.
[1] Surfbook was based on technologies whose patents were filed by Van der Meer in 1998[2] and granted in 2001 and 2002.
[3] It allowed users share their information with selected people and approve posts using a "Like" button,[2] and to link to external information.
[1] On February 5, 2013, holders of the patents related to this site (Rembrandt Social Media, LP) filed a lawsuit against Facebook for infringement.
[2] In June 2014, Facebook successfully defended itself against the lawsuit after a jury found that Facebook did not infringe the patents, and separately found the patents to be invalid.