Appeals court rules AdWords doesn’t infringe bidding patent
Bid for Position has lost an appeal to a ruling that its bidding system patent was not infringed by Google’s or AOL’s search advertising purchasing system. The decision of the lower court was affirmed by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this week.
Bid for Position owns rights to US Patent #7,225,151, titled “Online Auction Bid Management System and Method.” The company claimed that search advertising systems from AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Miva, Inc. infringed on its patent because they use auction bids to determine pricing for ads on search results. However, the court determined that there were important functional differences between the bidding system described in the ‘151 patent and Google’s AdWords/AdSense and AOL’s Search Marketplace.
US District Judge Jerome Friedman ruled in October of 2008 in favor of Google and AOL in a summary judgement that neither company’s system infringed the ‘151 patent. Microsoft and Miva had been dismissed as defendants before the case was decided.
Google has faced other lawsuits over AdWords, including another patent infringement case and a class-action suit alleging that Google unfairly sells ads for keywords that are registered trademarks of other companies.
