Applying the age-old concepts of searching and ranking to the Internet helped Google Inc. become one of the world’s richest companies. But over the past three weeks, Google and its lawyers have defeated three separate patent cases on the grounds that taking an abstract idea and adding a computer doesn’t warrant U.S. patent protection.
The rulings highlight the altered legal landscape for patent holders in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v. CLS Bank. And they come as more and more companies are fending off patent plaintiffs based on Section 101 of the Patent Act, which defines what kinds of ideas are eligible for patents.
