Appeals Court Reinstates Patent Suit Against Google
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Google must face a Wisconsin companyâs lawsuit over a toolbar feature that generates Web links from search data, a federal appeals court decided.
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Google&#39;s browser toolbar is back in court on patent infringement charges, after a U.S. court of appeals overturned part of a lower court decision. Google&#39;s AdSense contextual advertising service, though, is in the clear.Hyperphrase Technologies filed suit against Google in April 2006, alleging that Google&#39;s AdSense and the AutoLink function of its toolbar infringed claims in four Hyperphrase patents relating to the contextual linking and presentation of information. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin rejected the allegations in a summary judgement in Google&#39;s favor, and Hyperphrase appealed.On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the parts of the summary judgement relating to AdSense, and some of the claims against AutoLink, but overturned the part of the ruling dealing with AutoLink&#39;s alleged infringement of two of the patents. It remanded the case to the district court to be reexamined.AutoLink parses Web pages for text fragments in certain formats, and transforms them into links to Web pages it deems appropriate. For instance, it will link publication International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) to a corresponding listing on Amazon.com&#39;s bookstore, or link package tracking numbers to pages showing delivery status. It will similarly process U.S. street addresses and U.S. vehicle identification numbers.In its ruling , the court of appeals found that the district court had considered an inappropriate interpretation for &quot;data reference,&quot; one of the terms used in the patent claims to describe the way a link is made between a fragment of text and an element in a database. The court of appeals remanded the case to the district court to determine whether AutoLink infringed the patents under the new interpretation it suggested.Some have likened AutoLink, introduced in early 2005, to an earlier initiative from Microsoft called Smart Tags, which sought to add links determined by Microsoft to certain keywords appearing on Web pages viewed through its Internet Explorer browser. The feature, included in beta versions of the browser bundled with Windows XP, was roundly rejected by users for the control it gave Microsoft over the appearance of Web pages, prompting the company to&#160;remove the feature&#160;from production versions in June 2001. However, it left the function in its Office XP productivity software suite, released in May 2001, where it became the subject of another patent lawsuit brought by Hyperphrase. Microsoft won a summary judgement in that case in 2003.In Wednesday&#39;s ruling on the Google-Hyperphrase case, the court of appeals upheld the judgement of the district court regarding AdSense. The way AdSense infers the topic of a Web page to associate it with keywords that may not appear on the page, and link those keywords to advertisements, did not constitute use of a &quot;data reference&quot; in the sense of the Hyperphrase patents at issue, the district court had found, and the court of appeals agreed.A Google representative reached in London would not immediately comment on the court of appeals ruling.The company&#39;s latest quarterly financial report warns that is subject to intellectual property rights claims, and may face more in the future. Such cases are costly to defend and could require it to pay damages or prevent it from using certain technologiesOne such case, brought by Northeastern University in Boston and by Jarg, a company in Massachusetts that develops distributed search technologies,&#160;charges Google with infringing a patent&#160;for a method of breaking database queries into fragments and distributing them to multiple computers to get search results faster. Google has until Jan. 11 to file a response in that case.&#160;
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A United States appeals court upheld a finding of patent infringement against Research In Motion Ltd., which makes the BlackBerry data device.
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A U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday that Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry e-mail device, infringed on another company's patent  --  but sent the case back to a lower court for some of the claims to be reconsidered.
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A federal appeals court handed Google a setback in a patent fight on Wednesday, tossing out part of a summary judgment in Google's favor in a lawsuit filed by Hyperphrase Technologies, LLC.
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A US appeals court upheld a patent infringement finding against BlackBerry e-mail device maker Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM.TO: Quote, Profile
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Google responded to a lawsuit filed against it by Northeastern University, denying claims that its core search service infringes on patented technology.
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Internet search engine Google Inc. said Monday it was weighing a possible appeal after a Paris court ordered it to pay 200,000 euros (&#36;260,000) plus costs to luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton for breach of trademark.
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A federal appeals court handed  Google Inc a setback in a patent fight on Wednesday, tossing  out part of a summary judgment in the Web search engine's favor  in a lawsuit filed by HyperphRase Technologies, LLC.
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A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday upheld a verdict that Vonage Holdings Corp  infringed two patents held by Verizon Communications Inc , the latest legal setback for the loss-making Internet phone company.
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A federal judge on Wednesday handed online search engine Google Inc.  a victory in a trademark infringement case on Wednesday, ruling that when users searched for insurer GEICO, Google could display rivals as well.
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Blog: Google loses appeal of Gmail trademark case in Germany.
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A federal appeals court handed  Google Inc  a setback in a patent fight on Wednesday,  tossing out part of a summary judgment in the Web search  engine's favor in a lawsuit filed by HyperphRase Technologies,  LLC.
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A federal judge in Virginia has ruled that a trademark infringement suit filed by the Government Employees Insurance Co. (GEICO) against Internet search giants Google Inc. and Overture Services Inc. can proceed.
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Google has won a trade mark dispute, with a District Court judge finding that the search engineâs sale of sponsored search terms âGeicoâ and âGeico Directâ did not breach car insurance firm GEICOâs rights in the trade marked terms.
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WASHINGTON--A federal appeals court on Thursday wrestled with whether to overturn or uphold a lower court&#39;s $565 million judgment against Microsoft in the biggest patent dispute in Web history.
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A U.S. judge ruled that Google Inc.'s  3D modeling software, which gives Web users an astronaut's view of the earth and allows them to zoom down to street level, does not infringe the patent of a rival.