U.S. court of appeals hands Google a patent setback
Google’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’s AdSense contextual advertising service, though, is in the clear.
Hyperphrase Technologies filed suit against Google in April 2006, alleging that Google’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’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’s alleged infringement of two of the patents. It remanded the case to the district court to be reexamined.
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