MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) - A federal judge has dismissed a company's lawsuit that claimed Google Inc was infringing on its patents for two popular Internet search and advertising products.

US District Judge John Shabaz said in a ruling Thursday that Google's AdSense and AutoLink products do not infringe on the patents held by HyperPhrase Technologies LLC and its subsidiary, HyperPhrase Inc.
The four patents in question, all by inventor and company official Carlos de la Huerga, involve the storage and retrieval of electronic medical records. The patents cover a technology that creates links between one medical record and a second, related record.

The lawsuit filed in April claimed the patented technology was being used in two of Google's common products: AdSense, which provides text-based advertising and keyword targeted ads, and AutoLink, a toolbar feature that links to information such as maps, package tracking numbers and vehicle identification numbers.

HyperPhrase, which has offices in Madison and Mequon, Wisconsin, asked for unspecified damages and for Google to stop using the technology.
In a highly technical 25-page ruling, Shabaz granted Mountain View, California-based Google's motion to dismiss the claims.

He said the AutoLink software does not infringe on the patents because it identifies databases, not a data reference such as a medical patient's identification number, to produce links to information.
"AutoLink performs a completely different function in a different way to achieve a different result," Shabaz wrote.
As for AdSense, the judge said HyperPhrase's claims of infringement were "nonsense".

"The product involves connecting two records which the AdSense statistically predicts hold a common interest for the reader," Shabaz wrote. "It has nothing whatever to do with a reference in one record to a second record."
Madison lawyer James Peterson, who served as Google's local counsel in the case, praised the decision. He called the lawsuit a nuisance that lacked merit.
"This was clearly an attempt to generate revenue in a settlement from Google," he said. "It was fundamentally wrong and we're happy to have been vindicated by Judge Shabaz."

A federal judge in 2003 dismissed a similar lawsuit filed by HyperPhrase that claimed Microsoft Corp's Office XP suite of business software infringed on its patents. That suit sought $2 billion (euro1.5 billion) in damages.
HyperPhrase's lawyer was out of the country and did not immediately return a phone message.

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