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Google at the Federal Circuit: 3 Recent Cases

By George Khoury, Esq. on October 19, 2017 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Not all Silicon Valley legal disputes get handled in California. Google has found itself in front of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals quite a bit recently, particularly as the tech giant's self-driving car division, Waymo, has started to take off.

If you're wondering why, the answer is rather simple: The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is home to more patent cases than any other federal appellate court because it's the only circuit court of appeals with jurisdiction over patent appeals. And naturally, tech companies are going to fight over tech patents. Fortunately, this means the judges on the court are usually rather well suited to hearing cases involving tech companies.

Below are three recent Google cases at the Federal Circuit.

Waymo LLC v. Uber Technologies, Inc., 17-2130

Affirming a district court ruling denying motions to compel arbitration between the plaintiff and defendant where the plaintiff had an arbitration agreement with the intervening plaintiff because the plaintiff does not rely upon its agreements with the intervening plaintiff in asserting its claims.

Mieresonne v. Google, Inc., 2016-1755

In an appeal of inter partes review decision of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board holding that certain claims of a patent, which discloses a system whereby a user can identify a supplier of goods or services over the Internet, are unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. section 103 is affirmed based on prior art teachings.

Waymo v. Uber, 17-2235

Dismissing the appeal of a district court's denial of an application for writ of mandamus seeking to avoid the production of a report produced at the direction of counsel in a case involving the alleged theft of driverless vehicle technology where attorney-client and work-product privilege were claimed because alternative means of relief were available, the petitioner could not establish a clear and indisputable right to mandamus relief, and the district court properly determined that privilege did not apply to the discovery document at issue.

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