Jury orders Google to pay $340M patent-infringement damages over Chromecast Google has been ordered by a US federal court to cough up $338.7 million in damages for infringing someone else's patents with its Chromecast gear. A jury in Waco, Texas, on Friday found against the web giant, and set the nine-figure pay out. In that heady era of 2011 to 2012, Touchstream Technologies developed and launched …
I might be old, but even a bit over a decade ago I'd've thought it fell in to the "obvious" category.
I mean, I didn't need it as I already had an athlon pc hooked up to the crt with an s-video cable all the way back in 2001 so any "phone" content was already easily accessible on the tv, but the idea of screen mirroring should've failed the patent test on the obvious clause a decade later...
> they should have either tried to have the patent not be granted (they knew about it before it was granted/ cancelled
In principle, yes, however in practice it's actually quite difficult to challenge the validity of a patent until you've been sued over it. While it's pending there are channels for submitting examples of prior art, but you can't challenge anything else about it then either.
"Yep. Also note that the ruling was done in patent-lawsuit-friendly Texas."
Patents fall under Federal law and cases are only heard in Federal court. Not every Federal court hears IP cases (Copyright, Trademark, Patent). The State has nothing to do with the process.
@Sampler It's not screen mirroring the feed is coming from the internet not your phone. The phone tells the dongle what it wants to play the dongle fetches it from the internet via your TV's internet connection. That's a very simplistic description but that's the gist of it.
The patent goes into much more detail about how the feed is handled, selected and controlled, but does that make it worthy of a patent? Probably not, I say probably as I really haven't read the patents just had a quick look..
I had another look at the patents it seems Touchstream does not use a dongle the phone talks to a server via the internet and tells it what it wants played. The server identifies what is to be played and tells the media player on the tv to load and play that internet content.
Still not mirroring dongle or not the content played comes from the internet via the tv's internet connection.
I read the patents and the first google I did voided all three patents irrefutably. "DLNA".
HDMI CEC covered it to.
IR blaster as well
These are all modern enough that there are probably active patents.
So let's try Real Player for expired patents.
H.263 patents also covered all 3
Logitech has to have expired patents for the control aspect.
Google's lawyers were totally incompetent.
None of those things do what the patents describe. DLNA is not a system where you use a phone to connect to a server to select media and then get another device (the media player) to play that content. Nor does IR blasting, HDMI CEC is entirely irrelevant as well.
Did you read the patents?
A smartphone is just a computing device.
What's going on here is the dumbing down of technology knowledge. This plus enough legal smoke and mirrors (and the notorious East Texas judicial district) leads to this kind of judgement.
Still, in our society its a lot easier to make money by suing those who've got it than developing actual technology. Personally I wouldn't bother any more, I'd just let us subside into an agricultural backwater, stewing in our own exceptionalism.
That is why it is such a valuable patent.
If the invention were not obvious to a squashed slug then someone else will not monetise it before the patent expires. Without that import step who is the patent holder going to sue for infringement?
The patent in question is not about broadcasting data direct from your phone to the TV. It is about using your phone to navigate content on the internet, selecting that content and telling your TV to play it, from the internet.
Eg. You open Youtube and tell it to play a video on your TV. Your phone is not playing that video at all. Your TV is streaming it from the net. You can then control that stream from your phone, without the video data running on your phone.
> You cannot, on any remote control I know of, browse a media catalogue onscreen, then tell your TV to play your selection.
I made one of those.
I use ls on my remote control device to decide what to watch then direct my tv over an ssh connection from the same device to play it.
I didn't know we could patent ls and ssh so long after they were made! Is it an internet thing? Is my application of this "invention" not "the internet" because it's a NAS I have in my cupboard that I can use without telling Google what I'm doing? Because I don't view thumbnails? Should I have posted this anonymously to avoid a visit from lawyers?
> You cannot, on any remote control I know of, browse a media catalogue onscreen, then tell your TV to play your selection.
As far back as 2010, I could browse Sky's catalogue on my phone via their app, then use the app to get my Sky+ box to download that program. I could browse recorded programs and tell my Sky+ box to play them on the TV.
It's not the same as this patent, but it's not a huge leap to get from what this could do in 2010 to doing it from the internet.
Sounds like what sonos do with their speakers - or are they omitted from reach of the patent because they limited it to tv's and not just devices?
Given Sonos were founded in 2002, I think they probably pre-date this.
Also, I guess a little irony of Google running in to a similar problem they did with Sonos..
No, not the band (just about to tour again btw), but the either self hosted, or if I remember correctly you could use theirs as well, media streamer.
You used it effectively like a internet connected Media Server. I had it often stream my own ripped content to my PDA (iPaq) or more relevant to this, I could use it to tell it, from my PDA, over the internet, what to show on my PC screen.
> I could use it to tell it, from my PDA, over the internet, what to show on my PC screen.
No, the files were on his server, not his PDA.
The PDA was acting in place of the phone, telling the PC (i.e. the "smart TV") what to fetch from a server.
If you want to argue fine details, his account swapped the use of Internet and LAN - but patenting how many routers a particular data connection goes through is...
You are now going to say that the novel part is that the patent puts the command onto the server and the player side polls for commands. IGotOut didn't say which whether or not his setup did that - although in terms of "obviousness", would one set up a LAN with one host available over the Internet (a media server, that could also be streaming to his PDA - or just letting it download to play locally) or two (the media sever for playing on the PDA plus the PC to be told to also talk to the media server): given that choice, is the extra work for sake of the single point of vulnerability something that a reasonable person, generally versed in the art, would consider?
Stop recommending people read patents. The first thing any IP Lawyer will tell you is never look for patents and certainly don't read them.
Companies have legal teams to do the IP analysis, and the last thing they need is a software developer who knows the content of any patent, no matter how unrelated.
"The cost of doing business is all Google will see it as if their appeal fails."
The surprising thing is that Google didn't just make them a handsome offer to go away. They must have thought they had a good chance of winning, but given the cost of specialist blood sucking lawyers, it could have been a Pyrrhic victory.
The cost of lawyers is irrelevant. The principle is what's important, and that principle is "We always Win". IBM does the same thing.
Remember Ford spend way more than the cost of fixing the design of the Pinto defending the lawsuit, as the principle that "the manufacturer is not responsible for any accident in a car" was far too valuable to lose.
"Remember Ford spend way more than the cost of fixing the design of the Pinto defending the lawsuit, as the principle that "the manufacturer is not responsible for any accident in a car" was far too valuable to lose."
Ford could see that losing could open them up for endless lawsuits with juries awarding unreasonable sums of money. Patent infringement is different as it would be a one and done judgement, not the dam bursting on 100's more lawsuits.
Most IP suits are settled out of court with NDA's on both sides so you never hear about them. This means there isn't a need to "always win". Buying silence is the win.
Seems pretty typical of large companies. Dangle the prospect of a partnership or buyout in front of a small company with a product along the lines of one you want to create so they'll open up about their designs, only to ghost them at the last minute and suddenly come out with an almost identical product which had been in development the entire time. Usually putting the small company out of business. A story almost as old as capitalism.
And of course even with all the legal fees, assuming Google loses all efforts at appealing the decision, it's probably still just a drop in the bucket from all the money they've made off Chromecast over the years. Some poor executive will probably have to pay the fine out of their cocaine and hooker slush fund. Won't anyone think of the executives!? How can they be expected to hold a party on their mega-yacht if they don't have cocaine and hookers!? Who's going to show up for that party!?
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