Google and Yahoo, owners of the two biggest U.S. search engines, were sued by Xerox Corp. over patent-infringement claims related to search queries and data integration.

The suit, filed Feb. 19 in federal court in Wilmington, Del., seeks cash compensation and an order that would prevent Yahoo, Google and Google’s YouTube from further using the patented Xerox technology without permission.

The inventions come from Xerox research into managing documents on the Web, said Bill McKee, a spokesman for the Norwalk, Conn.-based company.

“We’ve been in dialogue with Google and Yahoo for some time without coming to a resolution,” McKee said in a telephone interview. “We believe we have no option but to file suit to properly protect our intellectual property.”

One patent, issued in 2004, is for a way to automatically generate a query based on keyword searches. Xerox claims that Google’s AdSense and AdWords software, and Yahoo’s Search Marketing, Publishing Network and Y!Q Contextual Search software are infringing that patent.

The second patent, issued in 2001, is for a way of updating pages based on user reviews. Google Maps, Google Video, the YouTube service and Yahoo Shopping all use that patented technique, Xerox contends.