Google LLC v. Parus Holdings, Inc.

Google LLC v. Parus Holdings, Inc. The Federal Circuit held that the Board erred by analyzing Burrows in isolation rather than the asserted obviousness combinations, adopted a construction of “unexpected response” without giving Google adequate APA notice and opportunity to respond, and failed to address Google’s inconsistency argument based on related IPR decisions. The court vacated and remanded. The decision reinforces that the PTAB must evaluate the petitioner’s actual combination theory, give notice before relying on a new claim construction, and explain apparently inconsistent treatment of related IPR records. Vacated and remanded. The challenged claims cover a voice-browsing system that ranks websites and adjusts rankings based on polling results, including no response, unexpected response, and relative response time. For both Kovatch-Burrows and Wise-Burrows, the Federal Circuit found the Board improperly focused on whether Burrows alone disclosed the ranking limitations instead of whether Burrows would have motivated modifications to Kovatch or Wise. The Board effectively construed “unexpected response” to exclude changed webpages by relying on the specification and extrinsic evidence, but the parties had not litigated that term as a claim-construction issue. For the Wise-Burrows ground, the Board also failed to address Google’s argument that rejecting unpatentability conflicted with earlier PTAB findings in related IPRs involving the ’941 and ’402 patents. The Federal Circuit did not decide obviousness; it remanded for the Board to reconsider the asserted combinations and, if necessary, explain any different treatment of the related IPR decisions. § 103 claim construction remand non-precedential § 103 claim construction remand non-precedential § 103 claim construction remand