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8 March 2017Patents

Google patent win affirmed by Federal Circuit

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed a decision holding that an invention asserted against Google is unpatentable.

Yesterday, March 7, the court held that the patent, called “Supplier identification and locator system and method”, was obvious in light of another patent and the 1997 book “World Wide Web Searching for Dummies”, written by Brad Hill.

Michael Meiresonne is the sole inventor of the asserted patent, US number 8,156,096.

The patent discloses a system allowing a user to identify a supplier over the internet. It concerns a “rollover window” that displays information on the selected supplier in a search list.

Previously, Google petitioned for an inter partes review of claims 16, 17, 19 and 20 of the ‘096 patent.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted review of the four claims and found that they were unpatentable in light of prior art.

According to the board, Hill’s book disclosed all limitations of claim 19 except for the “rollover viewing area” limitation, which was disclosed by US patent number 6,271,840 (Finseth).

“While the board recognised that Finseth refers to descriptive text as ‘cursory’ and indicates that a graphical preview is more useful than plain text, it nonetheless found that a person of ordinary skill in the art would not have read Finseth to teach away from the solution of the ‘096 claims,” said the Federal Circuit.

Meiresonne appealed against the decision to the Federal Circuit.

Circuit Judge Kimberly Moore, on behalf of the court, explained that the sole issue was whether Hill and Finseth “teach away” from the invention of the ‘096 patent.

The parties agreed that Hill teaches links and text descriptions and that Finseth teaches links and a rollover viewing area.

But Meiresonne argued that Hill and Finseth teach away from the combination of descriptive text and a rollover viewing area because “both prior art references disparage and criticise the use of descriptive text”.

The court disagreed, adding that after reviewing both references, “substantial evidence” supports the board’s fact finding that the prior art doesn’t teach away from the claimed combination.

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24 January 2018   The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit yesterday ruled against a patent challenge brought forward by Google.