Google Gets Sued For “AdSense!” Patent Infringement
In a fresh stint of technology battle headed to the “Patent and Trademark Office’s” recent narrowing of what qualifies as a patentable software innovation may help Google in this case but could harm the Internet giant in other lawsuits.
Consecutively for the fourth time this year, Google last week has been sued for patent infringement by Web Tracking Solutions and Daniel Wexler, claiming that its patent on third-party on-line accounting systems is being violated by Google’s AdSense offering.
According to a complaint lodged on July 31, Google’s AdSense service violates Wexler’s patent, “Third-party on-line accounting system and method thereof,” which was filed on Oct. 11, 1996, and granted Sept. 28, 1999.
Try reading the patent without fretting over the question of what the USPTO was thinking when it approved this as a “non-obvious” process.
In general, the patent sets forth a way to provide online accounting and statistical information about ads served by a third party — Google, for example — to a Web site on behalf of advertisers.
In other words, it seems that the USPTO thought that the idea of actually accounting for how many ad clicks were made by an advertising service to its clients is somehow deserving of monopoly protection.
Google has long been a foe of frivolous patents and last year backed calls for patent reform. “Google and other technology companies increasingly face mounting legal costs to defend against frivolous patent claims from parties playing with the system to forestall competition or reap windfall profits,” the company said in a blog post last year.
“This marks the fourth time Google has been sued for patent infringement in 2008. In 2007, the company was named in 13 patent suits.”
In a recent post on University of Missouri law professor Dennis Crouch’s blog, Patently-O, guest blogger John F. Duffy raises the possibility that Google may have a harder time enforcing its software patents because of the PTO-revised position on what is patentable.
Duffy mentions in reference to the Bilski case, which is currently being appealed, that the PTO “takes the position that process inventions generally are un-patentable unless they [result in a physical transformation of an article] or are [tied to a particular machine.]”
While this might invalidate some of Google’s patents, it should also provide Google with a defense against patent claims such as Wexler’s.
Whether or not Wexler’s patent qualifies as such is a matter for the courts, but the Patent and Trademark Office appears to have narrowed its definition of what qualifies as a patentable software innovation, a change that should help Google as a defendant in patent cases.