LexisNexis fends off appeal in patent case over lawyer billing software
Refiles with updated company code in paragraph 1
By Blake Brittain
Nov 12 (Reuters) -Information technology company LexisNexis REL.L convinced a U.S. appeals court on Tuesday to uphold a ruling against a patent owner that accused the company of infringing a patent related totracking lawyers' billable hours.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a lower court's decision that Realtime Tracker Inc's innovations in lawyer time tracking were unpatentable less than a week after hearing oral arguments on the case.
Realtime attorney Robert Goethals of Leichtman Law and LexisNexis attorney Oleg Khariton of Dinsmore & Shohl declined to comment.
Realtime sued Lexis in New York federal court in 2021 over a Realtime patent covering a computer system that two New York attorneys developed for tracking billable time automatically. It accused Lexis of infringing the patent with its Juris Suite Timer software.
Reuters News' parent company Thomson Reuters is a competitor of LexisNexis.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer sided with Lexis and dismissed the case last year, finding that Realtime's patent covered a patent-ineligible abstract idea. Realtime asked the Federal Circuit to reconsider the ruling, arguing in a court brief that the patent covered a "novel software invention" for improving computer functions.
A three-judge Federal Circuit panel had expressed some skepticism of Realtime's position during oral arguments last week.
"Can you do that same sort of tracking using a pen, paper and stopwatch?" U.S. Circuit Judge Tiffany Cunningham said.
The case is Realtime Tracker Inc v. Relx Inc d/b/a LexisNexis, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 23-1756.
For Realtime: Robert Goethals of Leichtman Law
For Lexis: Oleg Khariton of Dinsmore & Shohl
Read more:
LexisNexis fights patent appeal over lawyer billing software
Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington
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