Google owes $338.7 mln in Chromecast patent case, US jury says
Google owes $338.7 mln in Chromecast patent case, US jury says
Alphabet's Google violated a software developer's patent rights with its remote-streaming technology and must pay $338.7 million in damages, a federal jury in Waco, Texas decided on Friday.
Eastern District of Texas: The one-stop forum-shopping choice of patent trolls everywhere.
Quite literally the opposite of patent trolling. The company invented something. Acquired a patent. Tried to sell a license to google. Google left the negotiating table. And then not long after introduced a product that fulfilled all of the requirements to be protected by the patent licensing they hadn't paid for.
I hate patent trolls. These are not patent trolls. These are people the patent system is meant to protect. These are people who developed a product and wanted compensation for all the time and money they spent developing it. And they got it 10 years later, and probably didn't get as much total as they could have if Google hadn't fucked them over
These aren't really patent trolls, though. They made a technology, patented it and produced a product. Google met with them, but decided not to pay for the patent owner's technology and made their own instead.
"Made a technology"
Did they actually make anything, or did the CEO just patent an idea without ever putting it in production?
Because latter would be the textbook description of patent trolls. An idea is just an idea, if you can't execute it, the patent should be null and void.
On another note I have to say that such an obvious solution of "moving content from a small screen to the big screen" should hardly be patentable. It's quite literally just RPC, which has been in use in various shapes and forms for over 60 years.
Big tech are biggest trolls out there.
Are they still trying to patent a rectangular screen? Or pinch to zoom?
Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said on Monday that the company will appeal the verdict and has "always developed technology independently and competed on the merits of our ideas."
Bull. Good for them, glad the small guy won out, hopefully it doesn't get overturned on appeals. Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Apple have always stolen IP once they got big enough, usually with the hopes of either A) buying the little guy out or B) running them out of business. Glad the little guy one out for once.
Google doesn't need me to defend them, but the patents in question seem really generic and obvious...
Play control of content on a display device
Play control of content on a display device
Play control of content on a display device
All filed in 2011.
Patent trolls aren't the little guy, nor are they a good thing for the little guys out there.
The full patent goes into much more detail of the process: https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/8356251
Google didn't even argue that they didn't use this patented process. They tried (and failed) to argue that the patent was invalid.
Google will appeal so they haven't won yet. The next jury might believe them to be patent trolls. Who knows.
One third of one billion dollars? Google can find that in the couch.