Safe IP LLC v. Turnitin Holdings LLC

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: Safe IP LLC (Texas)
  • Defendant: Turnitin Holdings, LLC (Delaware)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Ramey LLP
• Case Identification: 6:22-cv-00684, W.D. Tex., 06/27/2022
• 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 plagiarism detection systems and methods infringe a patent related to using internet search results to evaluate the commonality of text elements found in documents.
• Technical Context: The technology concerns automated plagiarism detection, a field critical to academic institutions and publishers for verifying the originality of written works.
• Key Procedural History: The complaint does not reference any prior litigation, inter partes review proceedings, or licensing history related to the patent-in-suit. The complaint notes that its allegations of inducement are based on knowledge from the filing date of the lawsuit forward, but reserves the right to amend if pre-suit knowledge is discovered.

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 methods often find correlation between documents for reasons other than direct copying, such as the use of common third-party source code, widely known algorithms, or similar coding styles from the same author (’375 Patent, col. 4:22-24, col. 3:46-4:12). These methods rely on subjective determinations to distinguish benign correlation from actual plagiarism (’375 Patent, col. 4:32-35).
• The Patented Solution: The invention proposes a system to help resolve this ambiguity by taking an element of text common to two documents and searching for it on the internet using a public search engine (’375 Patent, col. 6:38-44). The system then receives the "number of hits" (i.e., the frequency of occurrence) from the search engine and presents this data to the user (’375 Patent, col. 8:56-60, Fig. 11). The patent suggests that elements with a high number of hits are likely common terms, whereas elements with few or zero hits have a "significant chance" of being the result of copying (’375 Patent, col. 6:55-59).
• Technical Importance: This approach seeks to provide a more objective, data-driven basis for plagiarism analysis by leveraging the vast corpus of the public internet to quantify how common a specific piece of text or code is.

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts infringement of claims 1-15 of the ’375 Patent (Compl. ¶8). Independent claim 1 is central.
• Independent Claim 1 of the ’375 Patent recites:
  • A computer-implemented method that begins by "reading, by a computer system, an element from a matching element database", where the element is "text that has been determined to exist in each of first and second files".
  • "sending, by the computer system, said element...to a search engine", which then "searches a plurality of sources for one or more hits of said element".
  • "receiving, by the computer system, from said search engine a number of the hits".
  • "displaying, by the computer system, to a user said element and said number of hits for said element as an indication of whether or not the correlation is due to plagiarism".
• The complaint reserves the right to assert dependent claims, which add limitations such as modifying the element before sending it (claim 2) and generating a spreadsheet for display (claim 4) (’375 Patent, col. 11:53-12:2).

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

• The complaint identifies the accused instrumentalities as "one or more plagiarism detection system systems" offered, sold, and manufactured by Turnitin (Compl. ¶8).

Functionality and Market Context

• The complaint does not describe the specific functionality or technical operation of the accused Turnitin products. It alleges generally that they are "plagiarism detection system systemS" and related services that are sold throughout Texas and used by customers such as educational institutions (Compl. ¶2, ¶10). The complaint does not provide sufficient detail for analysis of the accused product's architecture or specific features.

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint references an "attached exemplary claim chart" to support its infringement allegations, but this exhibit was not included with the filed complaint (Compl. ¶9). In the absence of a claim chart or specific factual allegations mapping product features to claim limitations, the infringement theory must be inferred from the complaint's general statements.

The complaint alleges that Turnitin's plagiarism detection systems perform infringing methods that meet the limitations of the asserted claims (Compl. ¶8). However, it does not explain how the accused systems allegedly meet each element. For example, it does not specify what component of the Turnitin system constitutes the claimed "matching element database", nor does it describe a process whereby the Turnitin system sends an element to a "search engine" and displays a corresponding "number of hits" to a user as an indication of plagiarism. No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

Identified Points of Contention

• Scope Questions: A central question will be whether Turnitin's proprietary database, which contains academic papers, publications, and internet content, qualifies as the "plurality of sources" searched by a "search engine" as contemplated by the patent. The patent's specification consistently uses public internet search engines like Google and Yahoo as examples, raising the question of whether a closed, proprietary search system falls within the claim scope (’375 Patent, col. 8:1-6).
• Technical Questions: The complaint provides no evidence that the accused Turnitin system performs the specific sequence of steps recited in claim 1. A key factual dispute will likely be whether the accused system (1) sends a discrete text "element" to a search tool, (2) receives a quantitative "number of hits" in return, and (3) displays that specific element alongside its hit count to the user for the purpose described in the claim.

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

The Term: "search engine"

• Context and Importance: The definition of this term is critical. If construed narrowly to mean only public internet search engines (e.g., Google, Bing), infringement may be difficult to prove if Turnitin's system relies solely on searching its own proprietary, closed database. If construed broadly to include any system that searches a corpus of data, Turnitin's system may be more likely to fall within the claim's scope. Practitioners may focus on this term because the patent's title and specification repeatedly invoke the public internet.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The claim language itself does not explicitly limit the "search engine" to one that is public or searches the internet; it only requires that it "searches a plurality of sources" (’375 Patent, col. 11:46-48).
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The patent is titled "Searching the Internet..." and the specification consistently uses "the Yahoo!® search engine" and "the Google™ search engine" as the primary and repeated examples of the claimed "search engine" (’375 Patent, Title, col. 8:1-6). The detailed description states, "in this embodiment the entire Internet is searched by the Search Engine 912, not just an Internet database of source code" (’375 Patent, col. 8:26-28).

The Term: "displaying...as an indication of whether or not the correlation is due to plagiarism"

• Context and Importance: This limitation defines the purpose and output of the claimed method. The dispute may turn on whether the accused Turnitin system displays a raw "number of hits" to a user for this purpose, or if it provides a different form of output, such as a composite "similarity score" or highlighted passages, which may not directly map to this claim element.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The language "as an indication of" could be argued to encompass any display that helps a user make a plagiarism determination, even if it is not an explicit statement.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The claim requires displaying both "said element and said number of hits for said element" (’375 Patent, col. 11:50-52). Figure 11, an exemplary spreadsheet, shows a direct side-by-side listing of "Statements" and their corresponding "Hits," suggesting the claim requires a direct, quantitative output rather than a qualitative or composite score (’375 Patent, Fig. 11).

VI. Other Allegations

Indirect Infringement

• The complaint alleges induced infringement, stating that Turnitin "actively encouraged or instructed" its customers on how to use its products in a manner that allegedly infringes the ’375 Patent (Compl. ¶10). The allegations do not specify the content of these instructions.

Willful Infringement

• The complaint requests a finding of willful infringement and treble damages in the prayer for relief (Compl., Prayer for Relief ¶e). The factual basis alleged is that Defendant has known of the patent "from at least the filing date of the lawsuit" (Compl. ¶10). This allegation supports a claim for post-filing willfulness but does not establish pre-suit knowledge required for pre-suit willfulness.

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

1. A core issue will be one of definitional scope: can the term "search engine" as used in the patent, which is heavily contextualized by references to public internet search engines like Google and Yahoo, be construed to read on the proprietary, closed-corpus search system that Defendant Turnitin allegedly operates?

2. A second key issue will be evidentiary and factual: given the complaint's lack of specific operational details, the case will depend on whether discovery shows that the accused Turnitin product actually performs the precise, multi-step method of claim 1—specifically, by isolating a common text "element", querying a search tool to get a quantitative "number of hits" for that element, and "displaying" the element and its corresponding hit count to the user as a direct "indication" of potential plagiarism.