Justia Internet Law Opinion Summaries

GeoTag’s patent claims systems and methods of searching online information within a geographically and topically organized database. It describes a preferred embodiment that organizes websites and files within a directory-like structure of folders categorized by geography and topic. In that embodiment, an Internet user may navigate to a folder labeled for a particular geographic area and then conduct a topical search within that area, such as for “information about specific goods and services in the geographic location.” Google sought a declaratory judgment that the patent was invalid and not infringed by Google’s AdWords platform. The court held that AdWords does not practice the “dynamically replicated” limitation of the patent because it does not search a narrow geographic area and automatically add results from a broader area; AdWords conducts a broad search for “all responsive ads” and then “consecutively filters” results. Before the court entered summary judgment, GeoTag unsuccessfully moved to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, arguing that the complaint did not establish a substantial controversy “of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant" declaratory judgment. The Federal Circuit upheld the claim construction and held that the court retained subject matter jurisdiction over GeoTag’s infringement counterclaims under 28 U.S.C. 1338(a), regardless of any flaw in Google’s complaint. View "Microsoft Corp. v. GeoTag, Inc." on Justia Law

Sgouros purchased a “credit score” package from TransUnion. Armed with the number TransUnion gave him, he went to a car dealership and tried to use it to negotiate a favorable loan. The score he had bought, however, was useless: it was 100 points higher than the score pulled by the dealership. Sgouros filed suit, asserting that TransUnion violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. 1681g(f)(7)(A); the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, 815 ILCS 505/1; and the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, Mo. Rev. Stat. 407.010, by misleading consumers by failing to inform them that the formula used to calculate their purchased credit scores was materially different from the formula used by lenders. TransUnion moved to compel arbitration, asserting that the website through which Sgouros purchased his product included an agreement to arbitrate. The district court concluded that no such contract had been formed and denied TransUnion’s motion. The Seventh Circuit affirmed after evaluating the website and concluding that TransUnion had not put consumers on notice of the terms of agreement, as required by Illinois law, but actually distracted them from noticing those terms. View "Sgouros v. TransUnion Corp." on Justia Law

Sgouros purchased a “credit score” package from TransUnion. Armed with the number TransUnion gave him, he went to a car dealership and tried to use it to negotiate a favorable loan. The score he had bought, however, was useless: it was 100 points higher than the score pulled by the dealership. Sgouros filed suit, asserting that TransUnion violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. 1681g(f)(7)(A); the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, 815 ILCS 505/1; and the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, Mo. Rev. Stat. 407.010, by misleading consumers by failing to inform them that the formula used to calculate their purchased credit scores was materially different from the formula used by lenders. TransUnion moved to compel arbitration, asserting that the website through which Sgouros purchased his product included an agreement to arbitrate. The district court concluded that no such contract had been formed and denied TransUnion’s motion. The Seventh Circuit affirmed after evaluating the website and concluding that TransUnion had not put consumers on notice of the terms of agreement, as required by Illinois law, but actually distracted them from noticing those terms. View "Sgouros v. TransUnion Corp." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, on behalf of himself and a putative class of California consumers who purchased flower arrangements through Provide's website, ProFlowers.com, filed suit alleging consumer fraud claims. On appeal, Provide challenges the trial court's order denying its petition to compel arbitration. The Terms of Use on ProFlowers.com fall into a category of Internet contracts commonly referred to as “browsewrap” agreements. Plaintiff opposed the petition to compel arbitration on the ground that he was never prompted to assent to the Terms of Use, nor did he actually read them, prior to placing his order on ProFlowers.com. The court found that the hyperlinks and the overall design of the ProFlowers.com website would not have put a reasonably prudent Internet user on notice of Provide’s Terms of Use, and Plaintiff therefore did not unambiguously assent to the subject arbitration provision simply by placing an order on ProFlowers.com. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Long v. Provide Commerce, Inc." on Justia Law

Avid’s patent is directed to a “system for decompressing consecutive streams of compressed video data to provide a continuous, uninterrupted decompressed video data output stream.” Many computers store video in a compressed form. One well-known compression format is MPEG. Instead of storing every video frame in full, MPEG stores only changes in one frame to the next. Before compressed video files can be played, they must be decompressed. Methods to compress and decompress videos were well known at the time of the patent application. The patent discloses that these prior art methods often generated blank frames between first and second videos when playing multiple compressed videos back-to-back due to system latency and purports to teach a system that allows play of compressed video streams one after the other without creating blank frames or a video-less gap when switching between streams by using multiple decompression buffers. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted inter partes review on a subset of the grounds in Harmonic’s petition and determined that the instituted ground did not render claims of the patent unpatentable. The Federal Circuit affirmed confirmation of claims 11–16 over the instituted ground and concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to review the Board’s institution decision. View "Harmonic, Inc. v. Avid Tech., Inc.." on Justia Law

The Blue Calypso Patents are all related and describe a peer-to-peer advertising system that uses mobile communication devices. At the request of Groupon, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted Covered Business Method (CBM) review of the Blue Calypso Patents under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA).The Board found certain claims unpatentable under either 35 U.S.C. 102, 103, or 112. The Federal Circuit affirmed that the patents are CBM patents that do not claim a technological invention and that certain claims were anticipated, but reversed the Board’s conclusion that the claim terms “endorsement tag” and “token,” as used in the 516 patent lack written description support. View "Blue Calypso, LLC. v. Groupon, Inc." on Justia Law

Columbia’s six patents involve applying data analytics techniques to computer security to detect and block malware. Columbia sued Symantec, alleging infringement. Based on the district court’s claim constructions, the parties agreed to a judgment of non-infringement and a finding of invalidity for indefiniteness. The Federal Circuit affirmed in part, holding that the district court correctly construed the term “byte sequence feature” in connection with two patents and the term “probabilistic model of normal computer system usage” in connection with two other patents and correctly found certain claims indefinite. Reversing in part, the court held that the district court incorrectly construed the term “anomalous” in other patent claims by requiring the model of normal computer usage be built only with “typical, attack free data.” View "Trs. of Columbia Univ. v. Symantec Corp." on Justia Law

Lewis sued the video-sharing service, YouTube, for breach of contract it deleted her "channel." YouTube filed a filed a request for judicial notice of the YouTube Community Guidelines and several e-mails between Lewis and YouTube.The trial court granted the request for judicial notice and entered a judgment of dismissal. The court of appeal affirmed, stating that no provision in the Terms of Service could serve as the basis for the relief that Lewis sought. The court noted that YouTube has restored service for Lewis. View "Lewis v. YouTube" on Justia Law

Musacchio resigned as president of ETS in 2004, but with help from the former head of ETS’s information-technology department, he accessed ETS’s computer system without authorization through early 2006. In 2010, Musacchio was indicted under 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C), which makes it a crime if a person “intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access” and thereby “obtains . . . information from any protected computer.” A 2012 superseding indictment changed the access date to “[o]n or about” November 23–25, 2005. Musacchio never raised the 5-year statute of limitations. The government did not object to jury instructions referring to: “intentionally access a computer without authorization and exceed authorized access” although the conjunction “and” added an additional element. The jury found Musacchio guilty. In affirming his conviction, the Fifth Circuit assessed Musacchio’s sufficiency challenge against the charged elements of the conspiracy count rather than against the heightened jury instruction, and concluded that he had waived his statute-of-limitations defense. The Supreme Court affirmed. A sufficiency challenge should be assessed against the elements of the charged crime, not against the elements set forth in an erroneous jury instruction. Sufficiency review essentially addresses whether the case was strong enough to reach the jury. Musacchio did not dispute that he was properly charged with conspiracy to obtain unauthorized access or that the evidence was sufficient to convict him of the charged crime. A defendant cannot successfully raise section 3282(a)’s statute-of-limitations bar for the first time on appeal. The history of section 3282(a)’s limitations bar confirms that the provision does not impose a jurisdictional limit. View "Musacchio v. United States" on Justia Law

Lumen’s 073 patent is directed to facilitating multilateral decision-making by matching parties, using preference data from two classes of parties. FTB operates a search website with a comparison feature, “AssistMe,” that provides personalized product and service recommendations by asking the user questions about attributes of the desired product or service. Lumen alleged infringement. FTB repeatedly informed Lumen that FTB’s accused feature did not involve bilateral or multilateral preference matching. Before receiving any discovery, Lumen served preliminary infringement contentions, including a chart identifying the allegedly infringing features of AssistMe. The district court granted FTB judgment on the pleadings, holding that the patent’s claims are directed to an abstract idea and invalid for failure to claim patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101. The court found claim construction unnecessary and awarded attorney fees. Finding the case exceptional under 35 U.S.C. 285, the court stated “basic” pre-suit investigation would have shown that AssistMe only used one party's preference data. The court explained factors that supported enhancing the lodestar amount, including “the need to deter the plaintiff’s predatory strategy, the plaintiff’s desire to extract a nuisance settlement, the plaintiff’s threats to make the litigation expensive, and the frivolous nature of the plaintiff’s claims.” The Federal Circuit affirmed the "exceptional" finding, but remanded for proper explanation of the calculation of fees. View "Lumen View Tech., LLC v. Findthebest.Com, Inc" on Justia Law