Chewy,Inc. an online pet retailer recently won a patent infringement lawsuit that was filed against them by International Business Machines Corporation, IBM.
The US District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the patent infringement lawsuit that claimed infringement of 5 patents.
The suit was dismissed as it was found that there was no infringement, the court also observed that the patents covered an abstract idea and was invalid for indefiniteness.
Some of the patents in the suit included a feature which allowed a user to hover over an image on the website which would magnify it and reorganization of hyperlinks on resizing browser display.
The Alice test was also used, which makes in necessary that the patent ‘describes a technical solution to a technical problem,’. The summary judgement request made by Chewy was also granted.
The dispute sparked when Chewy filed a declaratory judgement action in February 2021 where it sought a declaration of non-infringement of four patents, a counterclaim and an addition of one more patent lead to the suit discussed above. The declaratory action was sought as a response to a letter Chewy received from IBM in July 2020. The letter asserted that Chewy had infringed on four of IBM’s patents.
Chewy had also sued IBM on an overcharged patent licensing offer regarding a high licensing fee for Internet patents which were not valuable. The offer would have costed Chewy 36 million dollars.
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