Weisner v. Google LLC

Background

This patent-infringement case returned to the district court after the Federal Circuit remanded part of it. The district court had previously dismissed Weisner’s first amended complaint because it did not identify Google’s allegedly infringing features or compare those features with the patent claims in enough detail. Weisner then filed a second amended complaint.

The district court dismissed the second amended complaint in July 2022 on the ground that the asserted subject matter was patent-ineligible. On appeal, the Federal Circuit remanded the case as to two of the four patents. Google then renewed its motion to dismiss for failure to plead a plausible infringement claim.

Ruling

The court found that the second amended complaint cured the earlier pleading deficiencies. In particular, claims charts described the Google features allegedly infringing Weisner’s patent claims with sufficient detail. Applying the requirement that a complaint contain enough facts to make a claim plausible and give the defendant fair notice of the claim, the court found that Weisner had plausibly alleged infringement of the ’905 and ’911 patents.

The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate the open motion. The court canceled the existing schedule and ordered the parties to proceed with an answer and a four-column table identifying disputed patent terms and each side’s proposed meanings. The court also scheduled a claim-construction hearing before discovery and stated that discovery would not begin until the claim-construction order.

Classification

This is a procedural order because the court ruled on a motion to dismiss based on the adequacy of the pleadings, rather than deciding whether Google actually infringed the patents.