IP Law Daily, PATENT NEWS: LookSmart Group sues Google, alleging infringement of Internet search patent, (Oct 16, 2024)

By Steven Melendez

Google’s achieved search market dominance because of its infringment.

Nevada-based LookSmart Group has filed suit against Google alleging the company used technology covered by its search patent to dominate the Internet search market. The patent involves using a variety of factors, including likelihood a user will visit a web page, to rank search results (LookSmart Group, Inc. v. Google, LLC, No. 4:24-cv-07147-DMR (N.D. Cal. Oct. 14, 2024)).

Claims in its U.S. Patent No. 7,356,530 (the ’530 patent), issued April 8, 2008, involve looking at the internal content of a web page, as well as the pages that link to it and the text of those links, to determine the likelihood that a user will actually want to visit the page. This can be used to rank potential search results in relation to various searches users might do and make it more difficult for spammers to manipulate search engines into putting their less-relevant content first, according to the complaint in the case.

"This approach allows for the weighting of a web page based on both its intrinsic content and its connections to other Web pages, making it significantly harder for low-quality pages to dominate search rankings through manipulative tactics," according to the complaint.

The patent also addresses crawling sites across the web and precomputing these rankings in relation to particular keywords before a user ever makes a search, in order to return results quickly. "By doing the heavy computational work in advance, the system ensured that users received their search results in a fraction of the time," according to the complaint.

LookSmart alleges that Google began incorporating the patented technology into its own search engine beginning in the 2000s. Its personalized search technology, which debuted in 2007 to give different users different search results based on their interests, uses "pre-query indexing and content-weighted PageRank, two of the central inventions described in the '530 patent," according to the complaint.

Google is also aware of the patent, having cited it for more than a decade as prior art in its own patent applications, according to the complaint. LookSmart alleges Google has known it was practicing the invention claimed in the patent without a license.

"The success of Google’s search engine, which has culminated in its unparalleled dominance of the Internet search market, can be directly tied to its ability to deliver high-quality results quickly, which it accomplished by using the innovations claimed in the ’530 Patent," according to the complaint. "By improving the speed and relevance of search results, the ’530 Patent enabled Google to become the undisputed leader of the Internet search market, leaving competitors far behind."

LookSmart asked the court to declare that Google has infringed its patent and award damages of at least a reasonable royalty, attorney fees, interest, cost, and expenses.

The Case is No. 4:24-cv-07147-DMR.

Judge: Ryu, D.

Attorneys: Margaret Elizabeth Day (Bunsow De Mory LLP) for LookSmart Group, Inc.

Companies: LookSmart Group, Inc.; Google, LLC

Cases: Patent TechnologyInternet CaliforniaNews