Late yesterday, the Federal Circuit released a nonprecedential order dismissing an appeal. This morning, the Federal Circuit released one nonprecedential opinion. It comes in an appeal of a decision in an inter partes review proceeding by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Here is the introduction to the opinion and a link to the dismissal.
Google LLC v. Nobots LLC (Nonprecedential)
Nobots LLC is the owner of U.S. Patent No. 9,595,008, titled “Systems, Methods, Apparatus for Evaluating Status of Computing Device User.” Google LLC successfully petitioned the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to institute an inter partes review (IPR), under 35 U.S.C. §§ 311–19, of all twenty claims of the ’008 patent. The PTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board), upon conducting that review, rejected Google’s challenges to claims 18 and 19 while holding all other claims to be unpatentable. Google LLC v. Nobots LLC, No. IPR2022-00940, 2023 WL 8269284, at *24 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 29, 2023) (Final Written Decision). Google appeals the upholding of claim 19, whose patentability is the only issue before us.
Google disputes the Board’s claim construction of the claim phrase “acquiring interest data.” Nobots defends the Board’s construction and does not dispute that unpatentability follows if we reject the Board’s construction in favor of Google’s position. We hold that the Board’s claim construction was erroneous, and we therefore reverse the Board’s determination that claim 19 is not unpatentable.