LexisNexis fights patent appeal over lawyer billing software

Nov 7 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court heard arguments this week over a patent owner's bid to revive allegations that LexisNexis' (RELR.LJ) time tracking software for attorneys infringes one of its patents.

A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Wednesday questioned Realtime Tracker Inc's request to overturn a decision that its software innovations for tracking billable hours were unpatentable.

"Can you do that same sort of tracking using a pen, paper and stopwatch?" U.S. Circuit Judge Tiffany Cunningham asked a Realtime attorney during the oral argument.

Realtime sued Lexis in New York federal court in 2021 over its patent covering a system that two New York attorneys developed for automatically tracking billable time on a computer. It accused Lexis of infringing the patent with its Juris Suite Timer software.

Reuters News' parent company Thomson Reuters is a competitor of LexisNexis.

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer sided with Lexis and dismissed the case last year, finding Realtime's patent was invalid because it covered a patent-ineligible abstract idea.

"Whether by quill or by computer, humans have undertaken such timekeeping for client or customer benefit for centuries," Engelmayer said.

Realtime asked the Federal Circuit to reconsider the ruling, arguing in a court brief that the technology "improved the functioning of computers and the data processing system with a novel software invention."

Federal Circuit judges echoed Engelmayer's skepticism during oral arguments on Wednesday.

"Don't the claims essentially recite the practice of keeping track of billable hours with a generic computer?" Circuit Judge Alan Lourie said during the argument.

The case is Realtime Tracker Inc v. Relx Inc d/b/a LexisNexis, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 23-1756.