Here's an odd case. A Dutch programmer - Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer is suing Facebook over its 'Like' button. The odd thing: van Der Meer is dead. He passed away in 2004.

van Der Meer was the founder of Surfbook, a social diary type service where people could share things wtih friends and like things with a "like" button.

The lawsuit claims that Facebook "bears a remarkable resemblance, both in terms of its functionality and technical implementation, to the personal web page diary that Van Der Meer had invented years earlier."

Van Der Meer was awarded patents in 1998 for Surfbook, patents that presumably include the Like button.

Rembrandt Social Media, a patent-holding company, is the one that'll be doing the suing but Van Der Meer's widow and his colleagues will testify in the trial about the importance of his invention. [Ars Technica, BBC, CNET]