Google's patent case set back

BEIJING, Dec. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- A U.S. federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected a portion of a summary judgment that favored Google Inc. in a lawsuit filed against it, according to media reports Thursday.

The original lawsuit, filed last April by HyperPhrase Technologies, LLC and HyperPhrase Inc. in the state of Wisconsin, claimed that Google had infringed on four of its patents used to make AutoLink and AdSense.

HyperPhrase's lawsuit was dismissed in its entirety last December by U.S. District Judge John Shabaz.

But in a ruling on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Shabaz erred when he dismissed the claims involving Web search engine's AutoLink feature.

The court said it partially upheld the summary judgment, partially vacated it and remanded the case.

"The district court's grant of summary judgment is affirmed in part and vacated in part, and the case is remanded," declared the court.

The federal appeals court officially ruled that Google's AdSense tool did not, in fact, infringe upon HyperPhrase's patents.

The court handed down a split decision in the case of AutoLink, basically agreeing that Google did not infringe, as claimed, on one of the HyperPhrase patents. But the court vacated a summary judgment in favor of Google on two others.

The federal court then sent it back to the Wisconsin district court for more proceedings.

"We're very pleased that the Federal Circuit agreed that AdSense does not infringe any of HyperPhrase's patents. We continue to believe the remaining claims in the lawsuit are without merit, and will vigorously defend against those claims," said Michael Kwun, Google's managing counsel for litigation.

Autolink's been part of Google's Web browser tool bar feature since 2005, and it's used to automatically layer on additional hyperlinks to Web pages. Critics have accused Google of using the feature to modify Web pages to chosen partners.