LookSmart Group, Inc. v. Google, LLC

Background

LookSmart alleged that Google infringed U.S. Patent No. 7,356,530, titled “Systems and Methods of Retrieving Relevant Information.” The patent concerns retrieving relevant information from large collections such as the Internet.

The court had previously dismissed LookSmart's complaint after determining that the patent was directed to the abstract idea of collecting, storing, indexing, and ranking information. It also determined that the claims did not contain an inventive concept—something more than applying an abstract idea through well-understood, routine, and conventional activities. The court gave LookSmart one opportunity to amend its complaint.

LookSmart filed an amended complaint adding twelve paragraphs and a declaration from Michael J. Pazzani. LookSmart argued that the new allegations connected the patent's claim limitations to technological improvements involving the use of intrinsic and extrinsic webpage features to calculate rankings and the pre-indexing and storage of rankings to speed future searches.

Court's Analysis

The court applied the two-part eligibility framework associated with Alice v. CLS Bank. First, it asked whether the claims were directed to an abstract idea. The court reaffirmed that the patent's claims were directed to collecting, storing, indexing, and ranking information. It rejected LookSmart's argument that dependent claims added enough detail by addressing factors such as the number of outbound links, paragraph size, and keyword-based indexing. In the court's view, those claims still did not explain how the intrinsic and extrinsic ranking factors, content score, page weight, or anchor weight were calculated.

The court also rejected LookSmart's reliance on another Google patent, explaining that the eligibility of that different patent did not determine whether LookSmart's patent was eligible. The court stated that a patent need not recite a specific algorithm, but it cannot merely claim a desired function or result without limiting details that confine the claim to a particular solution.

At the second step, the court asked whether the claimed elements, individually or in combination, contained an inventive concept. LookSmart argued that combining intrinsic and extrinsic ranking factors in a particular order and using them for pre-query indexing improved search speed and was not conventional when the patent was created. The court found those arguments unpersuasive because the patent did not teach how to calculate the relevant ranking factors. It concluded that the claims provided broad, results-oriented functions rather than an inventive solution.

Disposition

Judge Tigar granted Google's motion to dismiss. Because LookSmart had not addressed the concerns identified in the earlier order, the court found that allowing another amendment would be futile and dismissed LookSmart's claims with prejudice. The Clerk was directed to enter judgment and close the file.

The opinion contains an apparent internal reference to the “’394 Patent” during the second-step discussion, although the patent identified throughout the opinion and in the disposition is the ’530 Patent.