Google loses Linux patent lawsuit

A federal jury awarded Bedrock Computer Technologies $5m from Google last week, although the company said it would fight the verdict.wholesale electronics accessories store

Bedrock had been seeking more than $180m and, if upheld, the smaller sum is a trivial amount for Google. But people tracking the case said it might encourage Bedrock to file similar cases against other Linux users.wholesale Android Tablets

“Google will continue to defend against attacks like this one on the open source community,” the company said on Friday. “The recent explosion in patent litigation is turning the world’s information highway into a toll road, forcing companies to spend millions and millions of dollars defending old, questionable patent claims.” wholesale ebook reader
Bedrock has pending cases against Yahoo, Amazon, PayPal and others. It is also defending a suit brought by Red Hat, one of the largest Linux distributors, which is asking a judge to rule that Bedrock’s patent is invalid. Red Hat did not respond to calls seeking comment.

The patent at issue governs a method “for information storage and retrieval using a hashing technique with external chaining and on-the-fly removal of expired data”. wholesale car recorder
Google declined to elaborate on its written statement, but people briefed on the case said only 30 lines of code were involved.wholesale baby monitor

Bedrock is one of a number of companies that make no products and have only patents as assets. Nearly 90 per cent of patent cases brought against leading US technology companies in the past five years were brought by such companies, prompting calls for legal reform of the patent system.smart car accessories