The opinion
1
2
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4 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
5 NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
6
7 LOOKSMART GROUP, INC., Case No. 24-cv-07147-JST
8 Plaintiff,
ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANT
9 v. GOOGLE, LLC'S MOTION TO
DISMISS
10 GOOGLE, LLC,
Re: ECF No. 55
Defendant.
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13 Pending before the Court is Defendant Google, LLC’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff
14 LookSmart Group, Inc.’s amended complaint. ECF No. 55 (“Mot.”). The Court will grant the
15 motion.
16 I. BACKGROUND
17 LookSmart filed this case on October 14, 2024, alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No.
18 7,356,530 (the “’530 Patent”). The ’530 Patent is entitled “Systems and Methods of Retrieving
19 Relevant Information” and issued on April 8, 2008. ECF No. 1-1 (“’530 Patent”). The ’530
20 Patent relates to “systems and methods for retrieving relevant information from a large collection
21 of information such as that on the Internet and in particular the World Wide Web.” Id. at 1:4–7.
22 The Court previously dismissed LookSmart’s complaint, finding that the ’530 Patent was
23 “directed to the abstract idea of collecting, storing, indexing, and ranking information” and “the
24 individual and ordered combination of elements in claim 1 fail[ed] to recite an inventive concept
25 reflecting more than the abstract idea of collecting, storing, indexing, and ranking information.”
26 ECF No. 51 (“Order”) at 11, 14. The Court granted LookSmart “one opportunity to file an
27 amended complaint.” Id. at 14. LookSmart filed an amended complaint on July 17, 2025. ECF
1 asserted in its prior motion to dismiss.
2 II. LEGAL STANDARD
3 To survive a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a
4 complaint must contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is
5 entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). Dismissal “is appropriate only where the complaint
6 lacks a cognizable legal theory or sufficient facts to support a cognizable legal theory.”
7 Mendiondo v. Centinela Hosp. Med. Ctr., 521 F.3d 1097, 1104 (9th Cir. 2008). “[A] complaint
8 must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible
9 on its face.’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly,
10 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). Factual allegations need not be detailed, but the facts must be “enough
11 to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555.
12 “A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the
13 court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.”
14 Ashcroft, 556 U.S. at 678. While this standard is not “akin to a ‘probability requirement’ . . . it
15 asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.” Id. (quoting
16 Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556). “Where a complaint pleads facts that are ‘merely consistent with’ a
17 defendant’s liability, it ‘stops short of the line between possibility and plausibility of entitlement to
18 relief.’” Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557).
19 In determining whether a plaintiff has met the plausibility requirement, a court must
20 “accept all factual allegations in the complaint as true and construe the pleadings in the light most
21 favorable” to the plaintiff. Knievel v. ESPN, 393 F.3d 1068, 1072 (9th Cir. 2005).
22 III. DISCUSSION
23 The Court previously determined that the claims of the ’530 Patent are not directed to
24 patent eligible subject matter. Order at 14. Despite being “skeptical that any additional
25 allegations could establish that the ’530 Patent is directed to patent eligible subject matter,” the
26 Court granted LookSmart “one opportunity to file an amended complaint.” Id. LookSmart’s FAC
27 adds twelve (12) new paragraphs, FAC ¶¶ 13, 21–23, 26–33, and attaches a declaration from
1 Michael J. Pazzani (the “Pazzani Declaration”).1 LookSmart alleges that the new allegations set
2 forth in the FAC “show[] a clear connection between the[] technological improvements [of (1)
3 incorporating both intrinsic and extrinsic features of a webpage to calculate a more accurate rank
4 and (2) pre-indexing and storing rankings to speed up future searches] and the language of the
5 claims, such that the patent should not be found abstract.” ECF No. 61 (“Opp.”) at 7–8.
6 A. Alice Step One
7 The Court begins with step one of the Alice patent eligibility inquiry, which asks whether
8 the claim is directed to a patent-ineligible abstract idea. At this step, courts consider “what the
9 patent asserts to be the focus of the claimed advance over the prior art.” Yu v. Apple Inc., 1 F.4th
10 1040, 1043 (Fed. Cir. 2021), cert. denied, 142 S. Ct. 1113 (2022). The Court previously
11 determined that the ’530 Patent was “directed to the abstract idea of collecting, storing, indexing,
12 and ranking information . . . .” Order at 11. After examining representative claim 1, the Court
13 found that “claim 1 d[id] nothing more than recite ‘a desired function or outcome without
14 providing any limiting detail that confines the claim to a particular solution to an identified
15 problem.’”2 Id. at 6 (quoting Affinity Labs of Tex., LLC v. Amazon.com Inc., 838 F.3d 1266, 1269
16 (Fed. Cir. 2016)). The Court rejected LookSmart’s argument that the patent “specification’s focus
17 on the patented invention’s improvements over existing search engine technologies demonstrate[d]
18 that the ’530 Patent [was] directed to patentable subject matter[,]” explaining that (1) “courts
19 generally ‘refuse to import details from the specification if those details are themselves not
20 claimed[,]’” and (2) “the specification . . . in fact confirm[ed] the abstract, results-oriented nature
21 of the claims.” Order at 7 (citation omitted).
22 LookSmart argues that the FAC “specifically ties the claim limitations to the technological
23 solution described in the specification.” Opp. at 8. LookSmart argues that “[t]he specification
24 shows that the problem facing the ’530 Patent’s inventors was a lack of speed and accuracy in
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1 The Pazzani Declaration was previously submitted in connection with the case LookSmart Grp.,
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Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., Case No. 17-cv-4709-JST. ECF No. 53-2. As the Court previously noted,
in that case, “the Court was not called upon to consider whether the ’530 Patent was directed to a
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patent-ineligible abstract idea.” Order at 1 n.1.
1 returning search results, particularly due to link spamming, and that the focus of the claims is
2 combining specific ranking factors in a pre-indexed database to solve these problems.” Id.
3 LookSmart further argues that “[c]laim 1 is directed to just such a solution because it combines
4 pre-ranking methods with a pre-indexing architecture to maximize search speeds” and “explains
5 specifically how to do this by articulating the exact factors to be weighted, the order in which to
6 weigh them, and then what to do with the resulting ranking (i.e., create a pre-query index).” Id.
7 (quotations and citation omitted). These are the same arguments the Court previously rejected,
8 after finding that “[b]oth the claims and the specification fail to specify how the intrinsic and
9 extrinsic ranking factors (and the content score, page weight, and anchor weight underlying these
10 factors) are to be calculated.” Order at 8 (emphasis added).
11 LookSmart now attempts to overcome this shortcoming by arguing that the FAC “adds
12 allegations showing the dependent claims specify ‘how the intrinsic and extrinsic ranking factors
13 . . . are to be calculated.’” Opp. at 8. LookSmart specifically argues that “[d]ependent claims 4
14 and 5 . . . limit ‘how the extrinsic ranking factors are determined and adjusted,’ specifically, by
15 weigh[]ing the size of a paragraph or the total number of outbound links[,]” which “directly
16 improves relevancy because links are more likely to be important if prominently displayed, rather
17 than buried among many other links or in a long paragraph.” Opp. at 9. LookSmart further argues
18 that “[c]laims 2 and 3 limit how indexing is conducted, specifically by selecting the keywords
19 from the pages in the collection, which is updated by repeatedly re-crawling the web[,]” which
20 “directly improves speed, because all the pages in the collection are regularly pre-indexed by each
21 keyword, rather than ranked on the fly.” Id. These arguments are not persuasive.
22 Claim 4 recites “[t]he invention of claim 1, where determining an extrinsic ranking factor
23 further comprises: adjusting the extrinsic ranking factor, for each linking page, for a link
24 weighting factor weight related to a quantity of outbound links on that linking page to other pages
25 in the collection of pages.” ’530 Patent cl. 4. Similarly, claim 5 recites “[t]he invention of claims
26 2, 3, or 4 wherein determining the extrinsic ranking factor further comprises: determining a size of
27 a paragraph in which the selected word is used in the linking page.” Id. cl. 5. Notably, these
1 ambiguity to the already abstract “extrinsic ranking factor.” Claims 2 and 3 also fail to teach how
2 the intrinsic and extrinsic ranking factors are calculated, as they add limitations relating to the
3 claimed indexing function. See id. cls. 2, 3.
4 LookSmart also argues that “software patents are not required to claim ‘some specific
5 algorithm’ to avoid abstraction[,]” and “[t]he ’530 Patent’s claims are specific enough.” Opp. at 9.
6 In so arguing, LookSmart relies on a patent issued to Google, U.S. Patent No. 10,839,029 (the
7 “’029 Patent”), which claims “a method of personalizing search results of a search engine . . . .”
8 FAC ¶ 30. The ’029 Patent is irrelevant to the Court’s analysis. The issue before the Court is
9 whether the ’530 Patent is directed to patent eligible subject matter; whether or not the ’029 Patent
10 recites patent eligible subject matter has no bearing on this issue.3 Additionally, although
11 LookSmart correctly notes that a patent need not recite a specific algorithm (Opp. at 9), a patent
12 cannot merely recite “a desired function or outcome without providing any limiting detail that
13 confines the claim to a particular solution to an identified problem.” Affinity Labs of Tex., LLC v.
14 Amazon.com Inc., 838 F.3d 1266, 1269 (Fed. Cir. 2016). The claims of the ’530 Patent fail to
15 provide any such “limiting detail.” Id. The Court therefore reiterates its prior conclusion that the
16 claims of the ’530 Patent are “directed to the abstract idea of collecting, storing, indexing, and
17 ranking information . . . .” Order at 11.
18 B. Alice Step Two
19 Having found that claim 1 of the ’394 Patent as directed to an abstract idea, the Court turns
20 to step two of the Alice inquiry, which asks “whether the claimed elements—‘individually and as
21 an ordered combination’—recite an inventive concept.” Cellspin Soft, Inc. v. Fitbit, Inc., 927 F.3d
22 1306, 1316 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (quoting Alice, 573 U.S. at 217). “An inventive concept reflects
23 something more than the application of an abstract idea using ‘well-understood, routine, and
24 conventional activities previously known to the industry.’” Id. Such a concept “must be
25 significantly more than the abstract idea itself, and cannot simply be an instruction to implement
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3 To be clear, the Court’s prior determination that the ’530 Patent is directed to patent ineligible
1 or apply the abstract idea on a computer.” Bascom Glob. Internet Servs., Inc. v. AT&T Mobility
2 LLC, 827 F.3d 1341, 1349 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
3 LookSmart contends that the ’530 Patent’s “inventive concept is . . . the combination of
4 [intrinsic and extrinsic ranking factors] in a particular order to increase the speed at which results
5 can be returned to the user.” Opp. at 11. LookSmart argues that the FAC “shows that the claimed
6 combination of intrinsic factors, extrinsic factors, and pre-query indexing was not well-
7 understood, routine, or conventional at the time of invention[,]” and this conclusion is supported
8 by the FAC’S “factual allegations, which the Court must take as true.” Id. at 12. LookSmart
9 further argues that the FAC “specifically alleges that ‘[p]rior art search engines in 2000 calculated
10 rankings at the time of query using conventional techniques,’ and that the ’530 Patent’s pre-
11 indexing method was a ‘foundational’ innovation that went beyond what was conventional in the
12 field.” Id. In so arguing, LookSmart relies on the Pazzani Declaration and “Google’s own history
13 of technological development.” Id. The Court does not find these arguments persuasive.
14 As an initial matter, the Court notes that the Pazzani Declaration is directed to the issue of
15 obviousness, not patent eligibility. Nonetheless, LookSmart argues that the Pazzani Declaration
16 “corroborates that at the time of the ’530 Patent’s invention, conventional systems did not employ
17 both page weight and anchor weight in calculating extrinsic score, did not combine intrinsic and
18 extrinsic scores, and did not use these scores to pre-index results” and “confirms that by
19 introducing these techniques, the ’530 Patent addressed prior systems’ problems with low
20 relevance results, susceptibility to spamming, and latency in retrieving ranked search results.” Id.
21 at 12–13. The Pazzani Declaration cannot, however, overcome the fact that the ’530 Patent does
22 not teach how one would calculate the intrinsic and extrinsic ranking factors, or the underlying
23 content score, page weight, and anchor weight. The Court reiterates that the ’530 Patent “recite[s]
24 broad functions” and “provides only a results-oriented solution.” Software Rts. Archive, LLC v.
25 Facebook, Inc., 485 F. Supp. 3d 1096, 1108 (N.D. Cal. 2020) (quotations and citation omitted).
26 LookSmart’s reliance on Google’s “own history of technological development” is similarly
27 unpersuasive. LookSmart argues that Google previously “described pre-ranking as an
1 “continued to tout the importance of speed improvements derived from pre-ranking five years
2 || after that.” Opp. at 13. LookSmart misses the larger picture. The Court’s focus is not whether
3 “employ[ing] both page weight and anchor weight in calculating extrinsic score,” “combin[ing]
4 |} intrinsic and extrinsic scores,” and “us[ing] these scores to pre-index results” are inventive
5 concepts, but whether the claimed elements of the ’530 Patent recite an inventive concept. As the
6 || Court explained in this and its prior order, the use of intrinsic and extrinsic ranking factors, and the
7 || underlying content score, page weight, and anchor weight, to pre-index results does not recite an
8 inventive step, as “claim 1 does not actually teach how to determine the page weight, content
9 || score, anchor weight, intrinsic ranking factor, or extrinsic ranking factor recited in the claim.”
10 || Order at 12-13. “There is, in short, nothing ‘inventive’ about any claim details, individually or in
11 combination, that are not themselves in the realm of abstract ideas.” SAP Am., Inc. v. InvestPic,
12 || LLC, 898 F.3d 1161, 1170 (Fed. Cir. 2018). Accordingly, the Court once again “finds that the
5 13 individual and ordered combination of elements in claim | fail to recite an inventive concept
14 || reflecting more than the abstract idea of collecting, storing, indexing, and ranking information.”
3 15 Order at 14.
16 CONCLUSION
3 17 For the foregoing reasons, the Court grants Google’s motion to dismiss. In light of
18 || LookSmart’s failure to address the concerns expressed in the Court’s prior order, the Court finds
19 that further leave to amend would be futile and dismisses LookSmart’s claims with prejudice.
20 || City of Oakland v. Oakland Raiders, 445 F. Supp. 3d 587, 603-04 (N.D. Cal. 2020), aff'd, 20
21 F.4th 441 (9th Cir. 2021). The Clerk shall enter judgment and close the file.
22 IT IS SO ORDERED.
23 Dated: October 3, 2025 .
24 JON S. TIGA
5 United States District Judge
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