Expedia cleared of wrongdoing in Federal Circuit patent dispute
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has backed a district court ruling that travel company Expedia is not liable for patent infringement.
In its ruling (pdf), handed down yesterday, August 18, a three-judge panel cleared Expedia of any wrongdoing, after it was sued by Cronos Technologies.
Cronos had accused Expedia of infringing US patent number 5,664,110, titled “Remote ordering system” which relates to tailoring search results online.
Cronos argued that information entered into search fields by users on the Expedia website constitutes item codes or identifying codes.
“No reasonable jury could find that defendants’ accused systems infringe the asserted claims of the ‘110 patent,” stated District Judge Leonard Stark in August last year.
“The search parameters identified by plaintiff are user-discernible representations of products or services offered on defendants’ systems and are not item codes or identifying codes,” he added.
Two days later Cronos served its intention to appeal both the decision and the court’s construction of item code and identifying code.
However, both were struck down by the Federal Circuit.
It stated that the district court “correctly construed the terms ‘item code’ and ‘identifying code,’ within the context of the ‘110 patent, to be distinct from ‘user-discernible information’.
“For the foregoing reasons we affirm the district court’s judgment,” the ruling concluded.
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