IP Law Daily, PATENT—Fed. Cir.: Claim construction reversed in bot-detection dispute, (Nov 20, 2025)

By Kevin M. Finson, J.D.

Google showed the unpatentability of a claim relating to detecting bots on the Internet.

In a non-precedential decision centered on claim construction, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and found in favor of Google. In April 2022, after having been sued for infringement by Nobots, Google successfully petitioned the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to institute an inter partes review (IPR) of all twenty claims of U.S. Patent No. 9,595,008 (the ‘008 patent). After a decision by the board, Google asserted that the board erroneously construed “acquiring interest data” in its determination that claim 19 is not unpatentable. The court agreed with Google, finding the board had improperly parsed the phrase “acquiring interest data” as involving the defined terms “acquired data” and “interest data” rather than as a verb under its ordinary meaning modifying the defined term “interest data” (Google, LLC v. Nobots, LLC, No. 2024-1432, (Fed. Cir. Nov. 20, 2025)).

Nobots is the owner of the ’008 patent which is entitled “Systems, Methods, Apparatus for Evaluating Status of Computing Device User” and which is directed to methods for detecting whether a computer accessing a website was being operated by a person or an automated program. The method involved gathering several kinds of data, defined as active or passive, and comparing data received from the accessing computer to model data to generate a probability that the accessing computer was operated by a person or a bot. Google, LLC petitioned for inter partes review of all twenty claims of the ’008 patent on the grounds of anticipation and obviousness. The PTAB instituted review and found all of the challenged claims except for claims 18 and 19 were unpatentable. Google appealed, challenging the claim construction underlying the board’s determination that claim 19 had not been shown unpatentable. The parties did not dispute that, under Google’s proposed claim construction, the claim would be unpatentable.

Claim construction. The parties disputed whether “acquiring interest data” could include only passive data, when “interest data” had been expressly defined as covering both active and passive data while “acquired data” had been defined as meaning only active data. The court found that the three-word phrase “acquiring interest data” was, as a matter of simple grammar, properly parsed to show the verb “acquiring” acting on the object “interest data”. Since “interest data” could include both active and passive data, the prior art reference’s use of exclusively passive data taught the limitation in dispute.

The court reversed the decision of the board.

The case is No. 2024-1432

Judge: Taranto, R.

Attorneys: Nathan R. Speed (Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, PC) for Google LLC. Stephen D. Zinda (Cabello Hall Zinda PLLC) for Nobots LLC.

Companies: Google LLC; Nobots LLC

Cases: Patent TechnologyInternet FedCirNews USPTO