A case of patent infringement against Google ended up being dismissed by a federal judge in Wisconsin.
Accusations that Google’s AdSense and AutoLink technologies infringed on four patents held by Carlos de la Huerga and his company, HyperPhrase, found no favor from US District Judge John Shabaz. The judge’s 25-page opinion about the case proved dismissive of de la Huerga’s claims.
De la Huerga believed infringement could be shown with regards to how one record can reference another record, as described in one of his patents. Judge Shabaz had a problem with the use of the term “record” though:
Considering the AdSense product, there are two records involved in the process: the web page and the advertisement. However, to suggest that either of these records “refers” to the other is nonsense. Web advertisements are prepared in isolation from and, in most instances, prior to the web articles are written. It is inconceivable that the advertisement would contain a “reference” to the article. It is equally inconceivable that the web page would contain a reference to the advertisement.
In the case of AutoLink, Google’s technology for creating a link to UPS when one of its tracking numbers appears on a web page for example, the court found that AutoLink did not infringe “because its process does not involve references to second records and does not involve common address formats as required by the patent claims.”
De la Huerga’s patents involve the storage and retrieval of medical records. To Shabaz, the patents are limited to medical records retained as electronic documents. “The unmistakable meaning of these terms is that there be a reference to a single, specific record which the created link retrieves,” he wrote.
An AP report on the case also noted de la Huerga similarly sued Microsoft over the same issue in Windows XP. A federal judge dismissed that action in 2003.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
