An important ruling was issued last Friday in the 4-year old patent infringement lawsuit that SEO platform BrightEdge filed against competitor Searchmetrics. The California federal court judge sided with defendant Searchmetrics, ending a long and expensive court battle.
At issue in the federal case were five patents Brightedge claimed were being infringed upon by competitive SEO platform Searchmetrics. Searchmetrics successfully argued that the patents owned by Brightedge were both abstract and broad and thus did not offer an “inventive concept” that satisfied precedent (Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Internationl, 2014) which ruled that abstract ideas are not patentable under Section 101 of the Patent Act — unless the claim contains an “inventive concept” that sufficiently transforms the idea into an application that then becomes patent-eligible.
In his ruling the judge agreed, invalidating the five patents owned by Brightedge. The plaintiffs had requested that a sixth patent be amended to the suit but the judge denied this request as well, advising that they would need to file a new lawsuit to address that new/additional patent dispute.
For Searchmetrics, this is an important victory that’s been a long — and expensive — battle to win. I reached out to Searchmetrics’ CTO Marcus Tober who said:
“In our competitive industry the ruling means that we can all focus even more on what matters most: applying innovation that helps our customers to succeed online.”
We also reached out to Brightedge for comment but have not received any and will update when we do.
About The Author
Michelle Robbins, SVP Content & Marketing Technology, oversees editorial direction as Editor in Chief for Third Door Media’s digital publications, Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today, directing a full-time staff of reporters and editors managing contributed content. She is responsible for developing the content strategy across all properties and aligning those initiatives with the programming and audience goals for Third Door Media’s two leading marketing conference series, Search Marketing Expo and The MarTech Conference. In addition, Michelle oversees information technology operations, directing the marketing technology department.
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