The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed a decision holding that an invention asserted against Google is unpatentable.
On March 7, the court held that the patent, called “Supplier identification and locator system and method”, was obvious in light of another patent and the 1997 book “World Wide Web Searching for Dummies”, written by Brad Hill.
Michael Meiresonne is the sole inventor of the asserted patent, US number 8,156,096.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted review of the four claims and found that they were unpatentable in light of prior art.
Meiresonne appealed against the decision to the Federal Circuit.
The court disagreed, adding that after reviewing both references, “substantial evidence” supports the board’s fact finding that the prior art doesn’t teach away from the claimed combination.

Source: WIPR