Safe IP LLC v. Grammarly Inc

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: Safe IP LLC (Texas)
  • Defendant: Grammarly, Inc. (Delaware)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Chong Law Firm PA
• Case Identification: 1:22-cv-00919, D. Del., 07/11/2022
• Venue Allegations: Venue is alleged to be proper in Delaware because Defendant is incorporated there, maintains a regular and established place of business in the district, and has committed alleged acts of infringement in the district.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s plagiarism detection systems and services infringe a patent related to using an external search of the internet to determine the commonality of text elements found in a document.
• Technical Context: The technology relates to automated plagiarism detection, which aims to distinguish between benign text similarities (e.g., common phrases or code) and direct copying by assessing the frequency of shared text elements across a large corpus like the internet.
• Key Procedural History: The complaint notes that the patent-in-suit was assigned to Plaintiff Safe IP LLC. It does not reference any prior litigation, inter partes review proceedings, or licensing history.

Case Timeline

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

U.S. Patent No. 9,043,375 - "SEARCHING THE INTERNET FOR COMMON ELEMENTS IN A DOCUMENT IN ORDER TO DETECT PLAGIARISM"

• Patent Identification: U.S. Patent No. 9,043,375, "SEARCHING THE INTERNET FOR COMMON ELEMENTS IN A DOCUMENT IN ORDER TO DETECT PLAGIARISM," issued May 26, 2015.

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent asserts that prior art plagiarism detection tools could identify correlations between two documents but could not objectively distinguish between actual plagiarism and other legitimate reasons for similarity, such as the use of common third-party source code, standard algorithms, or a consistent authoring style (’375 Patent, col. 3:33-4:23). This reliance on "subjective determinations" could lead to inaccurate conclusions about copying (’375 Patent, col. 3:35-36).
• The Patented Solution: The invention proposes a method and system to address this ambiguity. After identifying a textual or code "element" that is common to two different documents, the system searches for that specific element on the Internet using a search engine to determine its frequency of occurrence, or "number of hits" (’375 Patent, Abstract; col. 6:40-48). A high number of hits suggests the element is a common term or phrase, while a low number of hits suggests the correlation is more likely due to direct copying (’375 Patent, col. 8:60-col. 9:10). The system architecture involves a computing device running the program, a data storage device, and a connection to an external search engine (’375 Patent, FIG. 8).
• Technical Importance: The described method aims to introduce an objective, data-driven metric into plagiarism analysis by leveraging the vast corpus of the internet to contextualize textual similarities. (’375 Patent, col. 4:24-28).

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts infringement of claims 1-15, which includes independent claims 1 (a method), 6 (a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium), and 11 (an apparatus) (Compl. ¶8).
• The essential elements of independent claim 1 include:
  • reading, by a computer system, an element from a matching element database, where the element is text determined to exist in first and second files;
  • sending the element to a search engine that searches a plurality of sources for one or more hits of the element;
  • receiving from the search engine a number of the hits; and
  • displaying to a user the element and its corresponding number of hits as an indication of whether the correlation is due to plagiarism.

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

• The complaint identifies "one or more plagiarism detection system systems" that are offered for sale, sold, and manufactured by Grammarly (Compl. ¶8).

Functionality and Market Context

• The complaint alleges that the accused instrumentalities are "plagiarism detection system systems" and related services that "provide question and answer services across the Internet" (Compl. ¶8, ¶10). The complaint does not provide specific details regarding the technical operation, architecture, or user interface of Grammarly's plagiarism detection features, nor does it contain allegations regarding the products' market position or commercial importance.

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint references an "attached exemplary claim chart" to support its infringement allegations, but no such exhibit is provided with the filing (Compl. ¶9). The infringement theory must therefore be summarized from the complaint’s narrative allegations. The core allegation is that Grammarly's plagiarism detection systems practice the methods claimed in the ’375 Patent (Compl. ¶8). This implies an accusation that when a user submits a document, the Grammarly system identifies text that matches other sources and then queries a large external or internal database—alleged to be a "search engine"—to assess the originality of that text, ultimately presenting the results to the user in a manner that indicates potential plagiarism (Compl. ¶¶ 7-8).

No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

Identified Points of Contention

• Scope Questions: The patent specification focuses heavily on detecting plagiarism in "software source code" (’375 Patent, Abstract). A central legal question may be whether the patent's claims, which use the general term "text," can be construed to cover the analysis of natural language in prose, which is the primary use case for the accused Grammarly products. The patent does state its methods can be applied to other documents like "term papers" and "novels," which may support a broader construction (’375 Patent, col. 11:22-24).
• Technical Questions: The complaint does not provide evidence on how the accused system functions. This raises the factual question of whether Grammarly's system performs the specific step of "receiving... a number of the hits" from a "search engine" and "displaying" that numerical hit count to the user, as required by claim 1. The court may need to determine if the accused product's functionality, which may highlight text and link to a source, is technically equivalent to the claimed method of displaying a quantitative "hit" count.

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

The Term: "search engine"

• Context and Importance: The definition of this term is central to the infringement analysis. The patent’s specification explicitly identifies public web search engines like "the Yahoo!® search engine" and "the Google™ search engine" as examples (’375 Patent, col. 8:1-10). Practitioners may focus on this term because if the accused Grammarly system uses a proprietary, closed-access database for its comparisons, Defendant may argue that its system does not use a "search engine" as contemplated and disclosed by the patent.
• Intrinsic Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The term is not explicitly defined in the patent, which could support an argument that it should be given its plain and ordinary meaning, potentially encompassing any software that searches an indexed corpus of documents.
• Intrinsic Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The specification’s only concrete examples are public-facing internet search engines (’375 Patent, col. 8:1-10). This consistent framing could support an argument that the term is limited to such general-purpose, web-crawling engines and does not read on a curated, private database.

The Term: "displaying... said element and said number of hits"

• Context and Importance: This limitation defines the required output of the claimed method. Infringement will likely depend on whether the user interface of the accused product can be shown to present a specific text "element" alongside a corresponding quantitative "number of hits."
• Intrinsic Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: A plaintiff may argue this limitation is met by any display that communicates the frequency of a match, even if not presented as a literal integer (e.g., a "common phrase" warning or an originality score).
• Intrinsic Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The patent includes an exemplary spreadsheet in Figure 11 that shows a column of "Statements" (elements) next to a column with a specific numerical "Hits" count for each one (’375 Patent, FIG. 11; col. 8:44-54). This specific embodiment may be used to argue that the claim requires the display of a discrete number directly associated with the matched text.

VI. Other Allegations

Indirect Infringement

• The complaint alleges inducement by asserting that Grammarly "actively encouraged or instructed" its customers on how to use its products in an infringing manner (Compl. ¶10). It alleges contributory infringement by making similar instructional allegations and by stating that there are "no substantial noninfringing uses" for the accused services (Compl. ¶11).

Willful Infringement

• The complaint alleges that Defendant has known of the ’375 patent "from at least the filing date of the lawsuit," establishing a basis for post-filing willfulness (Compl. ¶10, ¶11). Plaintiff expressly reserves the right to amend its complaint to allege pre-suit knowledge if such evidence is revealed during discovery (Compl. ¶10, fn. 1).

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

• A core issue will be one of definitional scope: can the claim term "search engine", described in the patent with examples of public web search engines used to analyze software code, be construed to cover a proprietary database system used to analyze natural language, as is likely employed by the accused Grammarly product?
• A key evidentiary question will be one of operational correspondence: does the accused Grammarly system in fact perform the claimed steps of receiving a numerical "number of hits" and "displaying" that number to the user, or does it utilize a fundamentally different technical process for identifying and reporting unoriginal content that falls outside the literal scope of the claims?