A Delaware jury has returned a verdict of non-infringement for Alphabet (Google) in an lawsuit brought by Art+Com Innovationpool GmbH (1:14-cv-00217) over a single mapping patent (RE44,550). The German NPE had alleged that the company’s Google Maps product infringes the ‘550 patent through the manner in which it divides high-resolution map imagery into smaller sections called “tiles”. However, following a six-day trial, the jury found on May 27 that the Google service does not infringe the patent-in-suit. The jury further determined that Google had shown the asserted claims of the ‘550 patent are invalid as anticipated both by a third-party mapping system that predated Art+Com’s invention and by a paper published by the plaintiff over a year before the patent’s priority date.