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In Meiresonne v. Google, Inc., No. 2016-1755 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 7, 2017), the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s final written decision in IPR2014-01188 that the challenged claims in U.S. Patent No. 8,156,096 (the “’096 patent”) are unpatentable as obvious over the 1997 book “World Wide Web Searching for Dummies, 2nd Edition” by Brad Hill (“Hill”) and U.S. Patent No. 6,271,840 (“Finseth”). The sole issue before the Federal Circuit was whether Hill and Finseth teach away from the claimed invention.

The ’096 patent teaches a directory website that contains (1) a plurality of links to supplier websites, (2) “a supplier descriptive portion” located near a corresponding supplier link, (3) “a descriptive title portion” describing the class of goods or services listed on the website, and (4) “a rollover view area” that displays information about at least one of the suppliers corresponding to a link.
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