Judge Rader has been sitting by designation on several cases in the Eastern District of Texas. The 271 Blog noted that Judge Rader’s written opinion in one of those cases, PA Advisors LLC v. Google, Inc. et al., Case No. 2:07-cv-480 (E.D. Tex., March 11, 2010, order), has now been published.
In the opinion, Judge Rader granted summary judgment of non-infringement in view of BMC Resources, Inc. v. Paymentech, L.P., 498 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2007) and Muniauction, Inc. v. Thomson Corp., 532 F.3d 1318 (Fed. Cir. 2008) due to the fact that multiple independent actors were required to act in order to fulfill all the elements of a method claim (i.e., divided infringement). Claim 1 at issue in this regard recited:
1. A data processing method for enabling a user utilizing a local computer system having a local data storage system to locate desired data from a plurality of data items stored in a remote data storage system in a remote computer system, the remote computer system being linked to the local computer system by a telecommunication link, the method comprising the steps of:
(a) extracting, by one of the local computer system and the remote computer system, a user profile from user linguistic data previously provided by the user, said user data profile being representative of a first linguistic pattern of the said user linguistic data;
(b) constructing, by the remote computer system, a plurality of data item profiles, each plural data item profile corresponding to a different one of each plural data item stored in the remote data storage system, each of said plural data item profiles being representative of a second linguistic pattern of a corresponding plural data item, each said plural second linguistic pattern being substantially unique to each corresponding plural data item;
(c) providing, by the user to the local computer system, search request data representative of the user’s expressed desire to locate data substantially pertaining to said search request data;
(d) extracting, by one of the local computer system and the remote computer system, a search request profile from said search request data, said search request profile being representative of a third linguistic pattern of said search request data;
(e) determining, by one of the local computer system and the remote computer system, a first similarity factor representative of a first correlation between said search request profile and said user profile by comparing said search request profile to said user profile;
(f) determining, by one of the local computer system and the remote computer system, a plurality of second similarity factors, each said plural second similarity factor being representative of a second correlation between said search request profile and a different one of said plural data item profiles, by comparing said search request profile to each of said plural data item profiles;
(g) calculating, by one of the local computer system and the remote computer system, a final match factor for each of said plural data item profiles, by adding said first similarity factor to at least one of said plural second similarity factors in accordance with at least one intersection between said first correlation and said second correlation;
(h) selecting, by one of the local computer system and the remote computer system, one of said plural data items corresponding to a plural data item profile having a highest final match factor; and
(i) retrieving, by one of the local computer system and the remote computer system from the remote data storage system, said selected data item for display to the user, such that the user is presented with a data item having linguistic characteristics that substantially correspond to linguistic characteristics of the linguistic data generated by the user, whereby the linguistic characteristics of the data item correspond to the user’s social, cultural, educational, economic background as well as to the user’s psychological profile.
You can read Judge Rader’s written opinion for the district court here: [Link].