Research engine victorious in battle against NPE
Research engine operator FindTheBest has won a patent dispute against a non-practising entity (NPE) and has successfully invoked the fee-shifting provision under US patent law.
The research engine was awarded damages accrued from attorney fees and expenses from the “frivolous” and “objectively unreasonable” suit filed by the NPE, Lumen View Technology. The exact amount has yet to be confirmed.
The case, settled in court on May 30, centred on the research engine’s ‘AssistMe’ feature, a device that documents data from users and brings them together with a range of products.
It was alleged that the feature infringed Lumen View’s patent ‘073’, which protects an online matchmaking tool that brings consumers and products together.
Denise Cote, a judge at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, threw out the NPE’s claim. She said the NPE had “claimed a bilateral matchmaking process requiring multiple parties to input preference information”.
“No reasonable litigant could have expected success ... FindTheBest’s ‘Assist Me’ feature utilises the preference data of only one party,” she added, before awarding FindTheBest attorneys’ fees.
The prevailing party in a patent suit can claim attorneys’ fees if the case is deemed “exceptional”. A case is “deemed exceptional” under section 285 of the US Patent Act “when there has been some material inappropriate conduct” or when litigation is “brought in subjective bad faith” and is “objectively baseless”.
The NPE also claimed that chief executive officer of FindTheBest, Kevin O’Connor, committed a hate crime when he described the NPE as a “patent troll” and “the scum of the earth” on the news technology website, PandoDaily. This claim, however, was rejected by the court.
