Spider Search Analytics LLC v. Discover Financial Services

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: Spider Search Analytics LLC (Texas)
  • Defendant: Discover Financial Services (Delaware)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Stamoulis & Weinblatt LLC; Chaudhari Law, PLLC
• Case Identification: 1:18-cv-00746, D. Del., 05/16/2018
• Venue Allegations: Venue is alleged to be proper in the District of Delaware because Defendant is a Delaware corporation and therefore resides in the district.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s use of a third-party web crawling service to identify new advertising channels infringes a patent related to methods for focused web crawling.
• Technical Context: The technology concerns automated methods for crawling the internet to find and extract information from specific, relevant web pages, distinguishing them from the vast, unstructured web.
• Key Procedural History: The complaint does not mention any prior litigation, inter partes review proceedings, or licensing history related to the patent-in-suit.

Case Timeline

II. Technology and Patent(s)-in-Suit Analysis

U.S. Patent No. 7,454,430 - System and method for facts extraction and domain knowledge repository creation from unstructured and semi-structured documents

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent describes the challenge of efficiently finding and extracting specific facts from the vast number of unstructured and semi-structured documents on the internet, noting that conventional keyword searching often yields a high number of irrelevant results and fails to aggregate related information into a structured format (’430 Patent, col. 1:22-34; col. 2:1-12).
• The Patented Solution: The invention discloses a method for focused web crawling that begins with a defined set of starting web pages, termed "crystallization points" (CPs). From these initial CPs, the system performs a "breadth-first" crawl to discover and analyze linked pages, aiming to build a repository of relevant, domain-specific information rather than indexing the entire web (’430 Patent, Abstract; col. 8:21-23; FIG. 4).
• Technical Importance: This approach seeks to improve upon general-purpose search engines by creating a targeted, structured, and queryable knowledge base from public web data, making the information more accessible and useful for specific applications (’430 Patent, col. 1:56-62).

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts independent claim 1 (Compl. ¶19).
• The essential elements of independent claim 1 are:
  • A method for crawling the internet to locate pages relevant to an application and thus building a Web Crawler, comprising:
  • starting from a base set of application-dependent web pages or crystallization points; and
  • applying breadth-first recursive crawling.
• The complaint alleges infringement of "at least claim 1," which may suggest a reservation of the right to assert other claims as the case proceeds (Compl. ¶19).

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

• The accused instrumentality is the method used by Defendant Discover Financial Services, which involves the "80legs" web crawling service (Compl. ¶12).

Functionality and Market Context

• The complaint alleges that Defendant uses the 80legs API to create "dozens of web crawls each month" (Compl. ¶12).
• These crawls allegedly utilize a "custom 80app" built by Defendant to extract "custom-defined data elements" (Compl. ¶12).
• The stated purpose of this activity is to download the results to Defendant's own database to "identify new ad channels" (Compl. ¶12).
• No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

’430 Patent Infringement Allegations

• Identified Points of Contention:
  • Scope Questions: The preamble of claim 1 recites "building a Web Crawler." A potential issue is whether Defendant's alleged act of using and configuring the third-party 80legs service constitutes "building a Web Crawler" as required by the claim, or if that action is solely performed by the 80legs service provider.
  • Technical Questions: Claim 1 recites "applying breadth-first recursive crawling." The complaint alleges the accused method uses a "mixture of breadth-first and depth limited recursive crawling" (Compl. ¶14). This raises the question of whether a "mixture" of crawling techniques satisfies this claim limitation, or if the limitation requires a purely breadth-first approach.

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

• The Term: "building a Web Crawler"

  • Context and Importance: This phrase from the claim's preamble is central to the issue of direct infringement. Practitioners may focus on this term because the Defendant is a user of a third-party crawling service, and the court's interpretation will determine whether a user's configuration and operation of such a service falls within the scope of the claim.
  • Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
    • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The patent’s title and abstract focus on the end-to-end process of "facts extraction and domain knowledge repository creation," which could support an argument that "building a Web Crawler" encompasses the entire process of defining, executing, and utilizing a crawl to create a data set (’430 Patent, Title; Abstract).
    • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The specification describes a system comprised of distinct components like "Acquisition Server[s]" and "knowledge agent server[s]," which could support an interpretation that "building" refers to the creation of the underlying technical infrastructure, not merely its operation by an end-user (’430 Patent, FIG. 1; col. 9:1-13).

• The Term: "breadth-first recursive crawling"

  • Context and Importance: This term defines the core technical action of the asserted method claim. Its construction is critical because the complaint alleges the accused method uses a "mixture" of crawling strategies. The dispute will likely center on whether such a hybrid approach meets this limitation.
  • Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
    • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The patent describes "breadth-first" crawling as the method for exploring links from an initial set of pages, which could suggest that as long as this technique is applied, the claim is met, even if other techniques are also used (’430 Patent, col. 13:31-35; FIG. 4).
    • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The claim recites "applying breadth-first recursive crawling" without mentioning other techniques. A party could argue that this phrasing requires the applied crawling methodology to be exclusively or primarily breadth-first, and that the introduction of other strategies like "depth limited" crawling constitutes a different, non-infringing method.

VI. Other Allegations

• Willful Infringement: The complaint alleges that Defendant had knowledge of the infringement "at least as of the service of the present complaint," a basis for post-suit willfulness (Compl. ¶18). It includes a prayer for "enhanced damages," but does not explicitly allege pre-suit willfulness (Compl. Prayer for Relief ¶5).

VII. Analyst’s Conclusion: Key Questions for the Case

• A key legal question will be one of infringement liability: does a customer's configuration and use of a third-party cloud service constitute "building a Web Crawler" and "applying ... crawling" under the claim, or do these facts raise a divided infringement issue where no single party performs all the claimed steps?
• A core technical question will concern definitional scope: can the term "breadth-first recursive crawling" be construed to read on a "mixture" of crawling techniques that also includes depth-limited methods, or is the claim limited to a pure breadth-first implementation?
• An overarching evidentiary question will be what proof Plaintiff can obtain regarding the specific technical operations of the 80legs service as used by Defendant, since the complaint itself relies on a public knowledge base article for its technical allegations.