Linfo IP LLC v. Buckle Inc

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: Linfo IP, LLC (Texas)
  • Defendant: The Buckle, Inc. (Nebraska)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Ramey LLP
• Case Identification: 4:22-cv-01058, E.D. Tex., 12/19/2022
• Venue Allegations: Plaintiff alleges venue is proper because Defendant has a regular and established place of business in the district, conducts substantial business there, and has committed alleged acts of infringement within the district.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s system for discovering and presenting information within text content infringes a patent related to computer-assisted text analysis and user interface controls.
• Technical Context: The technology at issue addresses methods for automatically analyzing text to identify and categorize information based on semantic attributes (e.g., positive or negative sentiment) and presenting it to users in various interactive formats.
• Key Procedural History: The complaint does not mention any prior litigation, Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceedings, or licensing history related to the patent-in-suit.

Case Timeline

Date	Event
2011-12-09	U.S. Patent No. 9,092,428 Priority Date
2015-07-28	U.S. Patent No. 9,092,428 Issues
2022-12-19	Complaint Filed

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

U.S. Patent No. 9,092,428 - System, methods and user interface for discovering and presenting information in text content, issued July 28, 2015

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent describes the problem of "information overload," where users face difficulty and significant time consumption when trying to find specific information within large volumes of unstructured text, such as online product reviews. ('428 Patent, col. 1:12-25). For instance, a user may wish to find only negative comments about a specific aspect of a hotel (e.g., room service) from hundreds of reviews, a task that conventional search methods make laborious. ('428 Patent, col. 1:25-38).
• The Patented Solution: The invention provides a computer-assisted method that analyzes text to associate "grammatical, semantic, and contextual attributes" with words or phrases. ('428 Patent, Abstract). It then provides a user interface with objects that allow a user to specify an attribute (e.g., "positive comments") and an action (e.g., "show only" or "highlight"). The system then performs this action on the relevant text, presenting the information in a more digestible format, such as a hierarchical tree or a highlighted document. ('428 Patent, col. 3:5-25; Fig. 1).
• Technical Importance: This approach aimed to provide users with efficient tools to quickly and accurately locate specific, attribute-based information that would otherwise be difficult to handle or buried in scattered text content. ('428 Patent, col. 1:55-63).

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts infringement of claims 1-20. (Compl. ¶8). Independent claim 1 is central to the asserted art.
• Independent Claim 1 requires:
  • Obtaining a text content comprising words or phrases.
  • Selecting a first and second "semantic attribute" for users to choose from.
  • Identifying words or phrases in the text associated with those semantic attributes.
  • Displaying an "actionable user interface object" associated with the attributes.
  • Allowing a user to select one of the attributes via the user interface object.
  • Performing an action (including at least extracting, displaying, storing, showing, hiding, or highlighting) on the words or phrases associated with the user-selected attribute.
• The complaint reserves the right to assert dependent claims. (Compl. ¶8).

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

The complaint does not name a specific accused product or service. It generally accuses "a system with methods and user interface for discovering information in a text content and extracting and presenting the information that infringes one or more of claims of the ’428 patent." (Compl. ¶8).

Functionality and Market Context

The complaint alleges that Defendant "maintains, operates, and administers" the accused system. (Compl. ¶8). It further alleges that the system provides "interface objects to act on the discovered information, such as extracting, displaying or hiding, or highlighting or un-highlighting words or phrases in a text content." (Compl. ¶7). The complaint does not provide specific details, exhibits, or screenshots describing the technical operation or market context of the accused instrumentality.

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint references an "exemplary table attached as Exhibit B" to support its infringement allegations, but this exhibit was not included with the provided court filing. (Compl. ¶9). In the absence of a claim chart, the infringement theory must be inferred from the general narrative allegations. The complaint alleges that Defendant's system infringes by discovering, extracting, and presenting information from text content using a user interface, thereby mapping to the claims of the ’428 Patent. (Compl. ¶7-8). No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

Identified Points of Contention

• Technical Questions: A primary factual question will be whether Defendant’s system performs the specific steps recited in the claims. The complaint does not specify what features of Defendant's system allegedly identify words or phrases based on "semantic attributes" (e.g., positive/negative opinion) and perform actions like "extracting" or "highlighting" as claimed.
• Scope Questions: The dispute may center on whether standard e-commerce filtering or sorting functionalities (e.g., sorting reviews by "newest" or filtering products by "brand") fall within the scope of the claimed method, which focuses on acting upon user-selected "semantic attributes" of text.

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

The Term: "semantic attribute"

• Context and Importance: This term is the core of the claimed invention. The outcome of the case may depend on whether the functionalities of the accused system can be characterized as operating on a "semantic attribute." Practitioners may focus on this term because its construction will determine whether the patent covers general data filtering or is limited to more complex linguistic analysis.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The specification describes "semantic attributes" as the "meanings of a word or a phrase" and provides varied examples, including an "opinion," whether something is a "drug," or its status as an "over-the-count drug." ('428 Patent, col. 8:23-28).
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The patent’s detailed embodiments and figures heavily emphasize opinion and sentiment analysis (e.g., "positive" or "negative") derived from processing text with a pre-assigned dictionary and contextual rules, suggesting a narrower scope tied to linguistic content rather than simple metadata. ('428 Patent, col. 9:29-56; Fig. 6).

The Term: "actionable user interface object"

• Context and Importance: This term defines the mechanism through which a user interacts with the system. The infringement analysis will require determining if the accused system’s UI elements meet this limitation.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The patent discloses that the interface object can be "a set of radio buttons, a slider, or any sort of object that allows a user to selectively indicate an option," which could support a broad reading covering many standard UI controls. ('428 Patent, col. 10:1-2).
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The claims require this object to be directly associated with, and allow user selection of, a "semantic attribute" to trigger a specific action (e.g., highlighting, extracting). ('428 Patent, col. 16:10-23). An argument could be made that this requires a more specific linkage than a generic "Sort By" menu on an e-commerce page.

VI. Other Allegations

• Indirect Infringement: The complaint alleges induced infringement, stating that Defendant "has actively encouraged or instructed others (e.g., its customers...)" to use its products and services in an infringing manner. (Compl. ¶10). It also alleges contributory infringement on the same basis. (Compl. ¶11).
• Willful Infringement: The complaint alleges that Defendant has known of the ’428 Patent "from at least the filing date of the lawsuit," which serves as a basis for post-suit willful infringement. (Compl. ¶10-11). There is no allegation of pre-suit knowledge. The prayer for relief requests a declaration of willful infringement and treble damages. (Compl. p. 5, ¶e).

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

1. A core issue will be one of definitional scope: Can the term "semantic attribute", which the patent exemplifies with linguistic concepts like positive/negative opinion, be construed to cover the product filtering or sorting functionalities (e.g., by category, price, or brand) commonly found on an e-commerce website?
2. A key evidentiary question will be one of factual support: Given the complaint’s lack of specific operational details about the accused system, the case will likely turn on whether discovery produces evidence that Defendant's system performs the claimed method of identifying textual phrases based on user-selected attributes, as opposed to merely querying and reordering a product database using predefined metadata fields.