Northern District of California Judge William Alsup has granted
summary judgment of noninfringement for Amazon in a case from
inventor-controlled MasterObjects, Inc. In a September 15 decision, Judge Alsup held that the plaintiff
could not prove literal infringement of an auto-complete search
patent under the proper construction of certain key claim
limitations, leaving only the issue of infringement under the
doctrine of equivalents for possible resolution prior to a
scheduled October trial. The ruling follows another, similar
setback in one of the first two lawsuits filed in the long-running
MasterObjects campaign.
In that early Northern District suit, filed in March 2011
against Alphabet (Google) alongside another short-lived case
against Amazon, MasterObjects asserted the three earliest-issuing
members of the family at issue (7,752,326; 8,060639; 8,112,529), targeting features in the
defendants' products that suggest completions for a partial
text string in an
