Google’s victory over 3D spreadsheet patent applications confirmed by Fed Circ

(Reuters) – Google’s spreadsheet does not infringe patents held by a subsidiary of non-practicing entity Acacia Research, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Thursday.

Google Sheets is not a “three-dimensional spreadsheet” by the patent definition, US circuit judge Kara Stoll wrote for a unanimous panel of three judges.

The panel also rejected Data Engine Technologies LLC’s attempt to argue for a different interpretation of the “three-dimensional spreadsheet” that it advanced when defending the validity of patents. The Federal Circuit previously found the patents at issue to be valid in 2018, overturning U.S. District Judge Leonard Stark’s decision to invalidate the patents at Google’s request in 2016 because the claims concerned abstract ideas.

Google and its attorney Ginger Anders of Munger Tolles & Olson did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Data Engine or its attorneys Amir Alavi and Justin Chen of Ahmad Zavitsanos Anaipakos Alavi & Mensing.

The Plano, Texas-based data engine, a unit of Acacia Research, first sued Mountain View, Calif., Google in federal court in Delaware in 2014, alleging that its Google spreadsheet program Sheets infringed patents relating to the use of notebook-style tabs to organize and display information in three-dimensional electronic spreadsheets.

Stark granted summary judgment to Google last year, arguing that Google had not infringed, because Google Sheets is not a “three-dimensional spreadsheet” based on the use of the term in the preamble, or the introductory sentence, of the parts of the patent in question.

Data Engine argued on appeal that the preamble was not entitled to “patentable weight”. But Stoll, joined by circuit judges Jimmie Reyna and Todd Hughes, upheld the summary judgment ruling on Thursday, agreeing that the preamble limited other parts of the patent to only 3D spreadsheets and which Google had not infringed.

Stoll noted that Data Engine contradicted his argument for the Federal Circuit’s first case, where he said the preamble was part of what made the patents valid because they solved a problem specific to 3D spreadsheets.

“We have repeatedly rejected efforts to distort claims, such as ‘a wax nose’, in one way to avoid invalidity and another to find a forgery,” Stoll said.

Stoll also claimed that Stark’s interpretation of the “three-dimensional spreadsheet” requires a “mathematical relationship between cells on different spreadsheet pages,” and Google Sheets pages do not have this relationship.

The case is Data Engine Technologies LLC v Google LLC, United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 21-1050.

For the data engine: Amir Alavi and Justin Chen of Ahmad Zavitsanos Anaipakos Alavi & Mensing

For Google: Ginger Anders of Munger Tolles & Olson