Sholem Weisner has filed a second case against Alphabet (Google) (1:23-cv-08186), again in the Southern District of New York, this one asserting three more patents related to the two still in suit in the prior case. Weisner again targets the provision of Google Maps and again joins fellow named inventor Shmuel Nemanov as an involuntary plaintiff. Meanwhile, back in the first case between these parties, District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein has received full briefing as to whether a seven-year gap during prosecution of a parent application, between an abandonment and a revival, renders the patents-in-suit unenforceable.

The Federal Circuit has partially upheld a ruling that four location history patents asserted by inventor Sholem Weisner against Alphabet (Google) are invalid under Alice. On October 13, a majority of the court issued a precedential decision essentially affirming the Southern District of New York’s holding that two of the patents are unpatentably directed to the abstract idea of “creating a digital travel log”. However, the majority reversed the lower court’s invalidation of the other two patents, concluding that those two detail, via the specifications and the claims, taken together with plausible factual allegations in an amended complaint, an improved search ranking method with enough specificity to save the claims. That reversal prompted a dissent from Circuit Judge Todd M. Hughes, who argued that the latter two patents should have also been invalidated.

Individual inventor Sholem Weisner has sued Alphabet (Google) (1:20-cv-02862) in the Southern District of New York over the provision of Google Maps, targeting that service’s “Your Timeline” and “Your Places” features. A single patent, generally related to creating a history of a user’s physical location by tracking location through a mobile app, is asserted, the patent issuing to Weisner and Shmuel Nemanov, both of New York, New York. Weisner pleads that he “has produced a module for a software product that exploits” the asserted patent and that Google’s alleged infringement of it “causes harm to Weisner in the form of price erosion, loss of goodwill, damage to reputation, loss of business opportunities, inadequacy of money damages, and direct and indirect competition”.