IP Law Daily, PATENT—N.D. Cal.: Google defeats infringement lawsuit over search engine and CPU metering patents, (Aug 12, 2026)

By Saurabh Kashyap, B.A., M.A., LL.B., LL.M.

The asserted claims merely collected, ranked, or processed information using generic computer components and failed to recite specific technological solutions or inventive concepts.

A federal district court in California has dismissed with prejudice a patent infringement lawsuit against Google LLC involving three patents covering search-engine technology and hardware-based CPU utilization metering, holding that all asserted claims were directed to patent-ineligible abstract ideas under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The court found that the search-related patents claimed functional processes for organizing, ranking, and manipulating information without specifying technological means to achieve the claimed results, whereas the CPU-metering patent used conventional computer components to implement the abstract concept of tracking processor usage. Because the deficiencies appeared in the claims themselves, the court denied leave to amend (Valtrus Innovations Ltd. v. Google LLC, No. 5:26-cv-02379-PCP (N.D. Cal. Aug. 10, 2026)).

Background. Valtrus Innovations Ltd., the owner of patents relating to computer search and processor-utilization technologies, accused Google, a global technology company whose businesses include its internet search engine and cloud computing services, of infringing three patents. Valtrus originally sued Google in the Northern District of Texas in January 2022 and later brought a second action asserting many of the same claims. Those actions were consolidated and transferred to California. In March 2026, the California court dismissed the transferred consolidated action for lack of constitutional standing and claim splitting. Two days later, Valtrus commenced the present action, asserting the three patents.

The patents were U.S. Patent Nos. 6,728,704 (the ’704 patent), 7,346,604 (the ’604 patent), and 6,816,809 (the ’809 patent). The ’704 patent concerns merging results obtained from multiple search engines by selecting subsets of results, assigning scoring and representative values, and producing a merged list. The ’604 patent concerns ranking internet search results using “expert” documents to identify authoritative pages relevant to a particular query. The ’809 patent concerns hardware-based CPU utilization measurement, including determining when a processor is busy and using an indicator, clock, and counter to measure processor usage.

Google moved to dismiss the first amended complaint, principally contending that the asserted claims were patent-ineligible under Section 101.

Eligibility standard. Applying the two-step framework of Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208 (2014), the court first considered whether each patent was directed to an abstract idea and then whether its claims contained an inventive concept sufficient to transform that idea into patent-eligible subject matter.

For computer patents, the critical distinction was whether the claims focused on a specific improvement in computer capabilities or instead invoked computers merely as tools for implementing an abstract process. The court emphasized that the inquiry ultimately turns on what the claims actually recite; technical details contained only in the specification cannot supply limitations missing from the claims themselves.

Merged results. The court found the ’704 patent directed to the abstract idea of ranking and merging subsets of search results. Its independent claims essentially required transmitting a query, receiving results from multiple search engines, selecting entries, assigning scoring and representative values, and producing a merged list.

Those steps amounted to collecting, analyzing, organizing, and presenting information, the court found. Citing Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2016), it explained that presenting the results of abstract information-collection and analysis processes does not become patent eligible merely because a computer performs them.

Valtrus argued that the invention reduced the computational burden associated with examining and ranking thousands or millions of search results. It also pointed to allegations that Google later introduced its Universal Search feature, hired two inventors associated with the patent, and benefited from substantially faster merging using the patented technique.

The court found those allegations insufficient. The claims themselves did not recite the specific technical implementation that allegedly generated those improvements. Instead, they used generic functional language describing the desired information-processing results. Nor could increased speed resulting from computer implementation convert the abstract process into a technological improvement.

At Alice step two, the court found no inventive concept. The patent itself acknowledged that techniques for selecting subsets, calculating scoring values, and determining representative scores were known in the art. Valtrus’s expert declaration characterizing the combination as unconventional could not overcome the functional claim language and the patent’s own disclosures.

Search ranking. The ’604 patent met the same fate. The court characterized its claims as directed to generating a subset of documents and ranking those documents in response to a search query. The claims called for forming a set of “expert documents,” ranking them according to a query, ranking target documents linked by those expert documents, and returning the resulting list.

Valtrus argued that the patented Hilltop approach addressed shortcomings in earlier search engines, including their inability to distinguish pages authoritative on a particular topic from generally authoritative pages and their vulnerability to spam pages. The patent’s technique also allegedly retrieved results nearly twice as quickly as an alternative prior-art approach.

The court nevertheless found that the claims did not identify a specific technological mechanism responsible for those asserted improvements. Their limitations, instead, provided mathematical or logical criteria for organizing and ranking information. Limiting those abstract processes to internet searches did not render them patent-eligible.

The court distinguished Weisner v. Google LLC, 51 F.4th 1073 (Fed. Cir. 2022), where sufficiently specific claims plausibly recited an implementation addressing an internet-specific problem. Here, the ’604 patent lacked comparable specificity regarding how the claimed functions were technically achieved. The claimed expert-index concept also could not, by itself, provide the inventive concept at Alice step two, because an abstract idea cannot supply its own eligibility-saving inventive concept.

CPU metering. Although the ’809 patent presented a somewhat different technology, the court again found its asserted claims ineligible. The patent sought to replace software-based processor utilization measurement with hardware-based metering suitable for systems containing multiple operating systems.

The claims generally required determining whether a processor was busy, providing a busy indication to a counter, receiving system-time information, incrementing the counter according to the duration of processor activity, and maintaining the resulting value.

Google acknowledged that the patent proposed a hardware-based alternative to prior software approaches. But the court agreed that the claims were drafted at such a high level of generality that they ultimately claimed the abstract concept of tracking how long something was busy.

Valtrus argued that the recited counter, idle indicator, and usage data provider represented a particular arrangement of structures capable of tracking processor utilization across partitioned systems. The court disagreed, finding that the claims described those components largely according to the functions they performed rather than providing a concrete technical implementation.

The hardware limitation did not supply an inventive concept either. The court reasoned that simply moving a conventional task from software to generic hardware, without specifying the technical means for doing so, was insufficient. The patent’s alleged novelty over prior art could not alter that conclusion because novelty and patent eligibility are separate inquiries.

Dismissal with prejudice. The court therefore held that every asserted claim of the ’704, ’604, and ’809 patents failed both steps of the Alice analysis. Because the patent-ineligibility defects were apparent from the claim language, it dismissed all three infringement claims with prejudice and without leave to amend. It consequently did not address Google’s remaining arguments concerning pleading deficiencies or improper claim splitting.

Separately, the court denied without prejudice Google’s requests to seal extensive portions of the amended complaint and exhibits as overbroad, permitting Google to submit a more narrowly tailored sealing request within 14 days.

The Case is No. 5:26-cv-02379-PCP.

Judge: Pitts, P.

Attorneys: Andrew J. Strabone (Irell & Manella LLP) for Valtrus Innovations Ltd. Antonio Moriyama Sistos (Hogan Lovells Cadwalader U.S. LLP) for Google LLC.

Companies: Valtrus Innovations Ltd.; Google LLC

Cases: Patent CaliforniaNews