IBM’s Internet Ad Data Patent Not Infringed by Booking Sites

Booking Holdings Inc.'s Kayak, OpenTable, and Priceline websites and mobile applications don’t infringe an International Business Machines Corp. patent related to “caching” ad data, the Federal Circuit said May 22.

Booking wasn’t responsible for a user’s device performing part of the patented process, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said.

IBM owns U.S. Patent No. 7,072,849, related to a method for presenting advertising over a computer network. The technology allows users to “pre-fetch” and store ad data on their devices so it can be retrieved from the network quickly, in a process known as “caching.”

IBM alleged ...