Google has gotten its first major victory in a patent infringement case that has been going on since 2011. In a 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, the $30.5 million fine that Google would have had to pay to Vringo has been overturned.
Vringo filed a suit back in September of 2011 alleging that Google’s AdWords and AdSense programs were using filtering technology that they owned the patent to. The patent, which they purchased from Lycos earlier in 2011, covers some specific technologies and information that is used in filtering search results. The suit was originally against Google as well as several customers like AOL, IAC and Target. Google, however, agreed to take on the responsibility of any fines incurred to the other companies as well.
Google’s defense was primarily focused on the fact that the information covered in the patent was well known throughout the industry at the time it was filed. Even though a lower court found that Google did violate the patent, the Appeals court stated the following, “We agree and hold that no reasonable jury could conclude otherwise. The asserted claims describe a system that combines content and collaborative data in filtering each “infomon” – or information item – for relevance to an individual user’s search query….As the asserted patents themselves acknowledge, however, search engines, content based filtering, and collaborative filtering were all well-known in the art at the time of the claimed invention.”
While Vringo Inc may be able to appeal further, this is likely going to be the ruling that stands on the case. Vringo Inc stock suffered significantly after the verdict was announced, dropping as much as 73%.
