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By: Lucia Moses The online-recruitment game got more competitive for newspaper-owned CareerBuilder LLC after Yahoo! Inc. bought HotJobs.com in February, making it a much bigger player.

Now, CareerBuilder is taking them on in court, slapping HotJobs with a patent-infringement lawsuit. Filed Oct. 15 in Chicago, the suit accuses HotJobs of infringing on two of CareerBuilder's patents with its "Job Search Agents" feature, which lets job seekers sign up to get e-mail notifying them of a job match. CareerBuilder said it would seek damages that could exceed $20 million.

Six days before, with threats of legal action growing, HotJobs and Yahoo! had sued CareerBuilder, seeking a declaration that its patents are invalid, unenforceable, and not infringed by HotJobs.

CareerBuilder already had reason to be peeved at HotJobs when the patent trouble started. In a July letter to HotJobs, the company complained that HotJobs sales reps were e-mailing messages disparaging CareerBuilder to CareerBuilder customers.

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