Posts Tagged: "Google"

On December 19, Google LLC filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against SerpApi, LLC, alleging violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The suit centers on claims that SerpApi, a “scraping” service, unlawfully circumvents Google’s technological barriers to scrape copyrighted content from its search results pages on a massive scale, thereby profiting from Google’s efforts without compensation.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Thursday reversed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) finding that Google had failed to prove one claim of a patent directed to CAPTCHA-like technology unpatentable. The opinion was authored by Judge Taranto and the panel included Chief Judge Moore and Judge John H. Chun of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, sitting by designation.

This Monday, Irvine, CA-based memory technology developer Netlist filed a complaint  with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging rampant infringement of its patent rights by dynamic random access memory (DRAM) devices manufactured by Samsung, including those used in Google products. The complaint is Netlist’s latest action against Samsung following a breached joint development agreement and two jury verdicts entered in U.S. district court awarding Netlist more than $420 million for Samsung’s infringing memory modules.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) today announced an agreement with Google for the “Gemini for Government” platformto provide federal agencies with access to Google’s artificial intelligence and cloud services at discounted rates.Gemini is Google’s flagship generative AI chatbot, supporting text, image, video, and code generation across multiple platforms, including Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Meet. Under the GSA agreement, which is valid through 2026, agencies can access Google’s AI-optimized and accredited commercial cloud services, Gemini models, and agentic capabilities.

Samsung today lost its bid at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) to transfer a suit brought against it by Mullen Industries LLC from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas  to the Northern District of California.

Mullen sued Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (SEC) and Samsung Electronics America, Inc.  (SEA) in Judge Rodney Gilstrap’s Texas court for infringement of its patents through Samsung smartphones, tablets, and watches, including Google Maps and Wear OS functionalities, both of which were developed by Google. Samsung moved to transfer the case to the Northern District of California (NDCA) based mostly on Google’s presence there, and the district court denied the motion.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari Monday in Cellspin Soft v. Fitbit, a case arguing in part that a district judge should have been recused due to her spouse’s financial ties to Google and her own ownership of Google stock through heavily managed investment funds. The petition for writ of certiorari, filed by Bluetooth media upload developer Cellspin in April, claimed that Rogers’ impartiality could reasonably be questioned based on those financial interests, some of which were only disclosed following summary judgment.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Longitude Licensing Ltd. v. Google LLC affirming yet another ruling invalidating patent claims via judicial exceptions to patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Federal Circuit agreed with the Northern District of California that Longitude’s patent claims to digital image correction technologies are directed to abstract ideas claimed in functional terms without any explanation of how the claimed improvement is achieved.

A Virginia judge today found Google liable under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act for anticompetitive behavior and monopolization of the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising. However, the court dismissed a claim that Google monopolizes the advertiser ad network market. Like the D.C. court that found Google liable under Section 2 of the Sherman Act for monopolization of search services in August 2024, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia also declined to sanction Google “at this juncture” despite the company’s “systemic disregard of the evidentiary rules regarding spoliation of evidence and its misuse of the attorney-client privilege,” which Brinkema said “may well be sanctionable.”

On April 3, the deadline passed for response briefs to challenge a petition for writ of certiorari filed at the U.S. Supreme Court by Bluetooth media upload developer Cellspin Soft. Among the major tech companies declining to oppose Cellspin Soft’s petition for writ is Google, who owns respondent Fitbit and whose financial ties to the spouse of U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, along with the judge’s own ownership of Google stock through heavily managed investment funds, are at the center of Cellspin Soft’s arguments that Judge Gonzalez Rogers should have been recused because her impartiality could reasonably be questioned based on those financial interests, some of which were only disclosed following summary judgment.

On October 8, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and attorneys general (AGs) from every U.S. state as well as the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico filed a proposed remedy framework in the federal antitrust lawsuit against Internet services giant Google currently ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. While the proposed remedies could change with further discovery, the framework includes several measures that would prohibit Google’s self-preferencing its search engine platform on its products and certain contractual behaviors that undermine competition from rival search engines.

In a rare grant of en banc rehearing, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today agreed to revisit a June 2024 precedential decision that affirmed a district court’s orders in favor of EcoFactor, Inc. against Google, whose appeal in part asked for a new trial on damages due to prejudicial error. Judge Prost dissented-in-part from the panel opinion, stating that the majority’s opinion with respect to damages “at best muddles our precedent and at worst contradicts it.”

Gemini Data, Inc., an AI software company, has sued Google, LLC for trademark infringement, alleging that the rebranding of Google’s AI chatbot from BARD to GEMINI represents a “calculated decision to bulldoze over Gemini Data’s exclusive rights without hesitation.” In February 2024, Google announced it would be re-branding BARD to GEMINI and attempted to register the trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The application was refused due to a likelihood of confusion with Gemini Data’s mark, after which the complaint alleges that Google attempted to acquire rights to the GEMINI brand via an anonymous entity. Despite the USPTO’s refusal and Gemini Data’s rejection of the offer to sell its brand rights, Google continued to use the GEMINI mark, says the complaint.

On the heels of a judgment from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier this month that found that “Google is a monopolist,” Yelp, Inc. has brought a lawsuit against Google in the Northern District of California under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 2, and California’s Unfair Competition Law. The suit alleges that Google is “engaging in various anticompetitive practices designed to monopolize the markets for local search services and local search advertising.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on August 14 issued a Rule 36 decision that affirms several Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) rulings relating to petitions brought by Twitter and Google. The PTAB held most claims of three B.E. Technology patents unpatentable, save for one arguably key claim that covers “real-time targeted advertising.”