Opinion ID: 210154
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: AdSense

Text: Unlike for AutoLink, the district court's infringement analysis for AdSense did not rely on whether AdSense's alleged data references referred to only one or to multiple 2007-1125, -1176 14 records. Rather, the district court essentially held that neither AdSense's topics nor its keywords refer to any of the records ultimately linked to them; thus, neither the topics nor the keywords are data references within the meaning of the Patents-In-Suit. We agree and therefore affirm this holding. When AdSense determines that a given webpage is 'about' a certain topic based on its statistical analysis of the words on that page, that topic is not necessarily itself found anywhere on that page. For example, in the case of a webpage dedicated to Elvis Presley's movies, AdSense could determine that the topic on its list of possible topics that most closely matches the subject of the webpage is Rock Music Artists, even though that phrase never appears anywhere on the page. Furthermore, AdSense could determine that an advertisement for Apple, Inc.'s iTunes online music store will be displayed because it generally relates to Rock Music Artists and Apple's advertisements are more likely to be clicked by users (thus generating more revenue for Google) than other companies' advertisements relating to the same topic. The phrase Rock Music Artists cannot reasonably be said to refer to an iTunes advertisement in the manner of the data references of the Patents-In-Suit. Most importantly, the phrase Rock Music Artists did not directly determine what advertisement was chosen, but rather the deciding factor was the predicted popularity of Apple's advertisements. Thus AdSense's topics are not data references within the meaning of the Patents-In-Suit. Similarly, AdSense's keywords do not determine and do not refer to the advertisement ultimately chosen. Returning to the previous example, if AdSense identifies the word girls (from the Evlis Presley film Girls! Girls! Girls!) as a known keyword, it may correlate girls with Rock Music Artists and select an advertisement 2007-1125, -1176 15 for the latest album of the all-male band Boys Like Girls because the band's record label agreed to pay premium rates to Google. Again, the word girls cannot reasonably be said to refer to an advertisement for a Boys Like Girls album in the manner covered by the Patents-In-Suit. And the choice of the album advertisement over other advertisements relating to the keyword and the topic is based on completely unrelated factors such as the rates at which certain advertisers agree to be charged for the AdSense service. Thus keywords are also not data references. We further hold that AdSense does not infringe any of the asserted claims of the Patents-In-Suit under the doctrine of equivalents. Both AdSense's topics and keywords are so far afield of the meaning of data reference as used in the asserted claims that no reasonable fact-finder could conclude that AdSense performs substantially the same function in substantially the same way. See Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Prods. Co., 339 U.S. 605, 608 (1950) (holding that an equivalent must perform[] substantially the same function in substantially the same way to obtain the same result).