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Google owes $338.7 mln in Chromecast patent case, US jury says
(www.reuters.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Technology
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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.
Thanks for the link, but I already provided links to all three patents (confusingly, with the same names) that they were making claims on in my reply.
The thing about patents is that they are regularly granted for blindingly obvious processes that should never be patentable. It's not just companies like Google that get screwed by this, it's individual developers, FOSS projects... All sorts.
The patent system is fundamentally broken.
Lmfao when I was looking at the Google links earlier (I found them myself in another comment) I didn't scroll down to the full text on their page...
I don't think this is blindingly obvious though. The obvious implementation would be to stream from the server to your phone, then your phone to the other screen. These patents detail a way of synchronising the devices and having the server stream directly to the screen, alongside your controlling device. That implementation might seem straightforward, but it is novel, if only because no one else had done it prior. If someone had done this prior to their application then maybe the patent could be invalidated, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
The patent system definitely has its flaws, but I don't think this patent is an example of that. They're not sitting on the patent doing nothing, they have their own implementations that they're selling, and were in negotiations with Google for them to use it. Google are just trying to get away without paying for things - just like they take our data and profit from that without paying us for producing it.
Google will appeal so they haven't won yet. The next jury might believe them to be patent trolls. Who knows.