Weisner v. Google LLC

Background

The court had previously denied Google’s motion for summary judgment on August 22, 2024. Google then moved for reconsideration of that decision. A reconsideration motion asks the court to revisit an earlier ruling, but the court explained that this remedy has a strict standard and generally requires the moving party to identify controlling decisions or information the court overlooked.

Google’s Arguments

Google repeated arguments from its earlier summary-judgment motion. First, it argued that Weisner had no proof of infringement of the ‘905 patent because the evidence concerned a feature that had been removed before the patent issued. Second, Google again argued for a narrower interpretation of the claims in the two patents.

Court’s Analysis

The court held that Google had not met the strict standard for reconsideration. It found that whether the relevant feature supported a finding of infringement involved a dispute of material fact—a disagreement about an important fact that could affect the result. Because of that dispute, the court could not conclude that a jury could not find infringement.

The court also rejected Google’s renewed claim-construction argument. Claim construction is the court’s interpretation of patent-claim language. The court stated that Google’s proposed narrowing of the patents conflicted with the patents’ written descriptions and lacked merit.

Disposition

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein denied Google’s motion for reconsideration. The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate ECF No. 239. The opinion does not alter the earlier denial of summary judgment or state a final result on the patent-infringement claims.