Google Owes $338.7 Million in Chromecast Patent Case, US Jury Says (reuters.com) 92
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. From a report: The jury found that Google's Chromecast and other devices infringe patents owned by Touchstream Technologies related to streaming videos from one screen to another. 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." Touchstream attorney Ryan Dykal said on Monday that Touchstream was pleased with the verdict. New York-based Touchstream, which also does business as Shodogg, said in its 2021 lawsuit that founder David Strober invented technology in 2010 to "move" videos from a small device like a smartphone to a larger device like a television.
wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, so Google sucks, but really this is a dumb patent.
"Goal" patent (Score:5, Insightful)
It's old hat to have one device echo bits to another device. Sounds like another one of those "goal patents" where a goal is patented instead of a specific technique. Goals shouldn't be patentable and should be squashed dead.
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U.S. Patent Nos. 8,356,251; 8,782,528; and 8,904,289
Play control of content on a display device [google.com]
Play control of content on a display device [google.com]
Play control of content on a display device [google.com]
Someone can read in more detail but it looks like they are trying patent using your phone to read a QRCode and then sending the link to Chromecast to play the encode URL.
The whole concept of a Chromecast has been attacked multiple times by patents which is probably what they've switched to Android TV type devices. These incessan
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The PS3 had a DLNA player and you could have it connect to and play video from a DLNA server. The PS3 also had 'remote play' to a PSP where a PSP could connect to the PS3 and play music, video, games from it. I _think_, and my memory is fuzzy, but I think that with the PSP you could tell the PS3 to play back a video from the DLNA server and have it display on the PS3 (your main tv, not the psp). If that's right, then that would be prior art since that was functional around the 2006-ish timeframe.
Re: wow (Score:1)
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I also invented streaming from one device to another in 2010. Small world! My paper [junction404.com] was published on April 10, don't know if that's earlier than the patent. Of course, I was streaming from the monitor to the smartphone, and controlling the computer from the phone screen. That may be a completely different invention for all I know. Feel free to use it as prior art otherwise.
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Based on the comment above by jonsmiri, it looks like their earliest patent application was filed in June 2011. However I haven't read your paper or the patents to know whether the invention matches.
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This is the system that Google paid for. We could have software patent reform, but Google knows that forcing software developers to maintain a patent portfolio shifts the balance of power towards the big developers. If Google starts to see competition from some startup they can leverage their patent portfolio to squeeze the little guy. The only downside, for Google, is that non-practicing entities can see where the market is going, file bogus patents that cover things that they know that the large player
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Really? When did Google use their patents to squeeze a little guy? Do you have a reference for that? As far as I know most of google's patents are defensive to block trolls from suing them.
that's not how any of this works (Score:1)
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Patent Trolls (Score:5, Informative)
I feel no love for Google, but the company suing is nothing more than a patent troll. Same Waco company that sues everyone for all kinds of non-sense and obvious patents they bought.
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Are these the activist judges we've been warned about?
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Re:Patent Trolls (Score:4, Insightful)
Patent trolls don't sue everyone. They sue companies with deep pockets. This makes sense because if they sued a smaller company with a similar patent they would not only receive far less money, but the small company could probably count on Google (and others) to help so that a bad precedent is not set.
As long as Google continues to lobby for stupid software patents then I am happy to see them reap what they have sown. This is the patent situation that Google has paid good money to protect and promote. Worse, they have worked very hard to spread this regime around the world. If enough patent trolls win big lawsuits against Google maybe Google will finally see that software patents are bad for everyone that actually writes software.
Re:Patent Trolls (Score:4)
According to this: https://ipwatchdog.com/2018/03... [ipwatchdog.com] some people even think Google made the patent system weaker.
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Bullshit (Score:2, Troll)
David Strober didn't invent jack shit and Touchstream Technologies (also Shodogg) isn't even a real company that does anything. There isn't a single person that exists in Waco, Texas with an IQ over 80.
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What is the product that David Strober invented? (Score:3)
We all get wild ideas, some of which might even be viable. But what product did this Mr Strober create and attempt to bring to market? Does he have any plans to actually create anything regarding this patent? Do these other companies actually make anything? Nope. As much as I despise Google, I despise patent troll freeloaders even more. Google is sure to win on appeal eventually, but one has to wonder if Google will just pay him off which is of course his goal. How noble. We shall see. What a messed up IP system.
Prior art (Score:2)
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Also, the first Avatar (2009).
Did any pin-head bother to RTFA (Score:1, Interesting)
According to the complaint, Google met with Touchstream about its technology in December 2011 but said it was not interested two months later. Google introduced its Chromecast media-streaming devices in 2013.
Touchstream said that Google's Chromecast copied its innovat
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I didn't realize people love to dick suck Google.
Where the fuck have you been the last 10+ years?
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Google sees tech, google realizes it's not reasonably patentable, google reinvents tech. Then you proceed to suck USPTO dick. Whoops, sorry, I told the true story.
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Well, either the complaint as stated by the plaintiff is the full story, or the full story is less favorable to the plaintiff.
Google may have "met" about the technology and said it wasn't interested in much the same way my company has "met" with some random vendor that cold called me that I hung up on.
Google might have met to discuss their "technology" and found that the company didn't actually have anything but marketing material, no actual technology to speak of. The company may have declined to mentione
Patents are toxic to society (Score:4, Interesting)
Parents are the legal monopoly of ideas. They exist so that if someone comes up with an idea, they can prevent anyone else from profiting from their idea. The rationale for this is, nobody would ever come up with new ideas if they couldn't prevent other people from making money off it.
Here is what WIPO gives as the rationale for why patents are beneficial:
"Patents provide incentives to and protection for individuals by offering them recognition for their creativity and the possibility of material reward for their inventions. At the same time, the obligatory publication of patents and patent applications facilitates the mutually-beneficial spread of new knowledge and accelerates innovation activities by, for example, avoiding the necessity to “re-invent the wheel”."
This is such a stupid rationale that it's hard to believe it became law.
- "recognition for their creativity" ? How about a fucking press release, rather than an exclusive monopoly on technological advancement of the whole society?
- "the possibility of material reward for their inventions"? You can patent something without any intent to ever do anything with it. You just sit on the patent waiting for an unsuspecting business to accidentally need something that you sat around and "thought up". So basically, the ideas that power our society are transformed into a long-term investment strategy for bored people, that coincidentally end up holding back society and harming businesses.
- "avoiding the necessity to “re-invent the wheel”"? We live in the 21st century. We re-invent the wheel All. The. Time. Patents are not needed to spread knowledge. We have books, we have the internet, we have many classes of people who just think and publish things. We have free preprint servers where scientific papers are pre-published for free. We don't need a patent system to record our ideas or research.
- The whole idea of capitalism (if you're into that kind of thing) is to create competition. Patents do certainly force other businesses to come up with new ideas, to get around the patent. But they also make it possible for companies to become monopolies of novel ideas, preventing competition.
- Waste of the government's time and money. Both the time and money spent on the patent system, and the time and money spent in the justice system arguing over patents.
- Fear of patent violation leads companies to choose to keep things secret or internal-only, leading to fewer ideas and implementations spreading and being able to be re-used. Lots of solutions could be reused or developed in public if there wasn't the threat of patent litigation. So it literally holds progress back.
- Patents are used to prevent new products from being released, by patent trolls, competitors, etc.
- The cost of licensing a patent is a barrier that keeps new products or services from being launched, which holds back both commercial and societal progress.
Abolish the fucking patent system. Sitting on your ass and having an idea, should never prevent someone who's actually interested in making a product or service from using the idea. The patent system is toxic and should be ended immediately.
Re:Patents are toxic to society (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents are the legal monopoly of ideas. They exist so that if someone comes up with an idea, they can prevent anyone else from profiting from their idea.
And THAT's the problem with the way they're implemented today. You're not supposed to be able to patent an idea. You are supposed to patent a specific IMPLEMENTATION of the idea.
Yeah. Moving data from A to B is obvious (Score:5, Funny)
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Thing is about patents is remember the system is over 100 years old. The original idea for 20 years for that monopoly was because technology moved at a very slow pace and also remember that after that 20 years it becomes to the public ill regardless. Its just the last 50 years have been fast. If you have an idea on where tech will be in 5 years you HAVE to patent it now. Even if you have a prototype tied with duct tape and string, if you don't, somone else will catch it. Look at the 3D printer patents
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If you have an idea on where tech will be in 5 years you HAVE to patent it now. Even if you have a prototype tied with duct tape and string, if you don't, somone else will catch it.
If something is so obvious that it will be independently discovered in five years, it SHOULD NOT be granted a parent. The only purpose of granting a state-backed monopoly is to protect a heavy investment in research that would not make commercial sense without it, and making sure that the public gets the knowledge in return. If the knowledge is not anything special and it's easy to discover, why should we protect it with public resources?
Patents shoud NOT primarily protect investments (Score:2)
"The only purpose of granting a state-backed monopoly is to protect a heavy investment in research "
Not true. The primary goal is to provide an incentive to make the invention public.
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Right? If I made some sort of improvement or invented some kind of new technology, without the patent system I would have to hide everything about that tech till my dyeing breath making sure no one ever knows how to replicate it. I don't have a problem with software patents as long as they are more of an algorithm approach (aka a more efficient compression algorithm) so that future generations can make use of it. The whole reason all the technology we have now is so diverse is because many of the old pro
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Doesn't matter if it's the idea or the implementation, the point is it's a monopoly for no good reason. Nobody deserves a monopoly.
what incentive, then? (Score:2)
If you were an inventor - would you disclose your invention without any incentive for doing so?
And if inventions were kept secret in the past - what would've been the consequences, in your opinion?
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That is patently false. (see what I did there?)
Processes, machines, manufactured articles, and compositions of matter are patentable if novel, non-obvious, and useful. Ideas are not supposed to be patentable, even if novel, useful, and non-obvious.
Re:Patents are toxic to society (Score:5, Insightful)
Software confuses judges so they don't understand what's an "idea" is versus implementation. Granted, the boundary is fuzzy, which is one of the problems.
Overall, software patents cause more problems than they solve. Big Edison-style R&D labs are not where most software ideas come from; they are a side-effect of someone working on a specific application. In that setting, patents encourage nothing new that wouldn't have already been created.
Nor do people browse patent databases for software ideas very often because the patent applications are usually too vague to be useful to developers. They browse them to avoid being sued, not for learning new approaches.
I know there are exceptions, but in aggregate, we'd be better off without software patents.
Yeah a precise specification of the problem (Score:2)
Any problem statement which is publicly known or obvious from context should not be patentable even if translated into a particular software method for doing it, especially if the software involves no novel and non-obvious algorithmic concepts.
Because another trained and competent developer could have done that in their sleep while simultaneously playing a video game, watching youtube, an
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The law states "patent should be non-obvious to a typical person trained in the profession" (paraphrased), but judges often completely ignore that for some odd reason.
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Hell, I remember a patent that was basically using a stdlib function to do something. Was literally the first thing 99% of programmers familiar with the language would reach for if asked to do X.
Of course, you also have the series of patents that were basically "Standard Business Practice [X], BUT ON A COMPUTER!", followed by "Standard Business Practice [X], BUT ON THE INTERNET!!!", and now "Standard Business Practice [X], BUT NOW ON A SMART PHONE!!!!!!!"
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Next: Doing X on ChatGPT
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If you're a billion dollar company the best solution is to patent everything you do. Not because any of it is novel or even particularly useful, but because it keeps the vultures away. It's a lot harder for patent trolls to argue you've infringed anything when the USPO has already certified your "inve
Re: patenting ideas (Score:2)
"...on a computer." to the claims
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Let me know when you've got the Coke formula. Perhaps if we had allowed it to be patentable 130 years ago....
That is another reason patents don't work, if you can keep a secret you do. If coke believed patenting its formula then why not do it now, the reason is right in you statement it has lasted 130 years, a patent only lasts 20. No profit maximizing company that believes it can keep its idea secret will choose to publish it, its just not in their interest.
The patent lawyer told us this this in the patent course my company made me do.
So the only things that end up being patented are things that can't be kept sec
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A challenge being that the software patent situation is more a minefield than an incentive at this point.
Patent trolls that have uselessly vague patents written by "inventors" who had no plans to implement, and in many cases wouldn't have even known *how* to implement what was written down. Some of the ideas are specific, but blatantly obvious to anyone skilled in the art, but they make it through the system as the office tends to favor granting stupid patents when in doubt.
So there's plenty of incentive t
Re:Patents are toxic to society (Score:5, Insightful)
- The whole idea of capitalism (if you're into that kind of thing) is to create competition. Patents do certainly force other businesses to come up with new ideas, to get around the patent. But they also make it possible for companies to become monopolies of novel ideas, preventing competition.
Capitalism as a theory, and capitalism as it exists in the USA are completely different concepts. You describe theoretical capitalism. What we have here is an implementation of "capitalism" that uses the word, but not really the spirit. Capitalism should prioritize competition. Our version prioritizes one thing and one thing only: profit for the largest companies, or biggest investors. Anything that has the potential to lower profits, or stop a potential increase in profits, is evil, horrible, terrible. Anything that locks knowledge behind a paywall, increases short-term profits, possibly even at the detriment to long-term profits, is priority number one. The patent system as implemented facilitates exactly that.
At some point it would be neat to see a society set up where it purports freedom and has anything other than profit as the primary motivator for almost all government and business decisions. Societal good means fuck-all to these people. In fact, things that would benefit everyone angers them. It's why you see so much rhetoric against universal healthcare. ("The wrong type of people might be able to access healthcare!") It's why you see so much hyperbole about unions. ("Unions cost the employee more than they benefit them.") It's why the reaction to homelessness increasing at a frightening pace as something to blame the individual for rather than a symptom of societal rot. ("If they'd just go find jobs. They'll just spend any money you give them on drugs. If they wanted a house, they could get one. etc.")
When the only end-goal of an entire society is to transfer all the wealth to the top? You see a LOT of systems in place that could be a net benefit being utilized in ways that are absolutely batshit fucking crazy to anyone with an eye on overall societal health. It feels very end-gamey to those of us watching with an eye on what it's doing to the entire planet, and to us as a species. Profit should not be priority number one in all things. It should be a factor in the business world, but it's become the literal ONLY factor for too much of our society. The planet's trying to give us a clue, but we as a collective are too stupid to pick up that clue and act on it. We'll just keep greeding our way right off the edge of the coming cliff.
And the patent system as utilized here will just be one tiny little tool in the toolbox of those that will take us to that cliff.
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What we have here is an implementation of "capitalism" that uses the word, but not really the spirit.
Capitalism means that capital controls the mans of production, and while I'm on the subject, capitalization (the act of engaging in capitalism) is where you invest your money to make more money. What we have here is capitalism coming to its natural conclusion. Throughout history mankind has come up with faster and more efficient ways to deplete resources and drive itself to extinction, and capitalism is just the dominant way that's being done today. For the easter islanders it was religion.
If you want capit
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Oh, we use socialism in America. We use it to prop up the biggest companies when they fail, to prevent it from looking like capitalism has any consequences for the owner class when they screw the pooch hard.
Re: Patents are toxic to society (Score:2)
Sure, those are the real voters. They cast their ballots directly into the real ballot boxes, Congressional pockets.
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The rest of your diatribe seems to misunderstand humanity or operate under the false notion that it's something that it's not. An individual may be altruistic, but the population is selfish. Hence the old quote that "Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's
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I don't think we need to do away with the concept of money or even the concept of greed in general. It can be good in limited, controlled ways. The only thing I'm saying is that we don't need to hold greed up as some sort of idealistic god-power as the ultimate meaning of all things as we have been here the last couple decades or more. Greed and profit are literally the ONLY thing that matter in American society. They come up, all other factors disappear. Which seems illogical to me when looking at certain
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Well said. I do not recognize you, but in the future I probably will.
Re: Patents are toxic to society (Score:2)
Not an idea, an implementation. Patents should allow a person with the relevant experience to develop the implementation. This unfortunately is rarely done.
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"Parents are the legal monopoly of ideas. They exist so that if someone comes up with an idea, they can prevent anyone else from profiting from their idea. The rationale for this is, nobody would ever come up with new ideas if they couldn't prevent other people from making money off it."
Not exactly. It exists to prevent large companies to steal from small inventors. And also, you get your monopoly on an idea because you share it. This is important in for instance medicine. Otherwise, corporations would simp
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"Not exactly. It exists to prevent large companies to steal from small inventors."
If you believe that, I think the Slashdot expression is that I have a bridge to sell you!
Alternately stated, It exists to prevent small companies from playing in the spaces occupied by large companies; after all they're the ones that can afford to patent anything (everything) *and* defend it.
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Ah ok. Well, definitely that too. I suppose that is closer to reality than my maybe naive hope of fairness in the world.
I stand corrected.
Now, tell me more about that bridge. :)
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But they also make it possible for companies to become monopolies of novel ideas, preventing competition.
Okay... but the larger the company, the more easily they can just take any other idea they find interesting, clone it, and sell it at a loss until the originator goes kaput. A variation of that concept nearly killed the video game market back in the Atari days.
What alternative(s) do you propose that doesn't just mean the entity with the deepest pockets wins?
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Okay... but consumers buy things for more reasons than price alone so I don't accept your conclusion. Nor do I accept that the hypothetical super-corp could do that all the time for all the things.
Perhaps a piece of the puzzle is to penalize companies that behave anti-competitively.
The system we have right now means that, on the whole and over time, the entity with the deepest pockets wins.
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Why would I propose an alternative? That's already how the world works, with patents, despite the fact that patents were supposed to prevent it. All I'm saying is get rid of the patents. The other problems are other problems.
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That's already how the world works, with patents, despite the fact that patents were supposed to prevent it.
Well, no, the larger guy didn't win. That's the point.
Patents not copyrights (Score:1)
Did their lawyers think independent creation was a patent infringement defense? Might be why they lost...
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It matters to the damage award amount.
X-11 (Score:1)
Yes, good job showdog. Moving an image from a small device to a large device.
I remember using X-11 to open a remote desktop from one device to another (size irrelevant) long before this claim.
NB: I have not read their patent as to how its claims are limited to foreclose preexisting technology, but X-11 clearly
accomplishes all that.
How the hell do you screw this up? (Score:2)
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The technology here has been around since I think the '70s and certainly since the eighties. Did they just blow off the entire case and piss off the judge or something?
All you need to know is that the case was tried in a small town in Texas and the defendant was a big California corporation.
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No, I worked with technology from back then, and the video content moved from a larger device to a smaller device.
This is totally different, you see it moves from a smaller device to a larger device. That's something we couldn't have even imagined.
Invention or idea? (Score:2)
" founder David Strober invented technology in 2010 to "move" videos from a small device like a smartphone to a larger device like a television."
Did he actually invent something to do this, or did he just patent the idea of doing it?
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Yeah, you shouldn't be able to patent "move videos from small device to larger device". That's too generic. It's a task, not a device.
I mean, just brainstorming a bit, what's the method?
Wired:
- HDMI
- DVI
- VGA
- Coax
- Ethernet
- Other
- Some new standard that will need to be built into new display devices for it to work
Wireless:
- Actually make a microstation, like the adapters that allow you to play music from your chosen device over a car without inputs via FM. Tune to a channel otherwise unused in your are
The Eastern District of Texas (Score:2)
Hmm.... (Score:2)
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> will expire sometime in the early-to-mid 2030s. Patent trolls will face a hard time then, since their entire "industry" will collapse. I can't wait.
They are likely owned by conglomerates which have 11 other shady businesses to fall back on. Diversification is how fat cats escape being smacked by change.
Landmark (Score:2)
East Texas (Score:2)
Isn't Waco in the East Texas which is notorously used by so-called "patent trolls"? Is this another case of that?
How about Xwindows/vnc as prior art? -among others (Score:2)
Displaying remotely an image is neither new nor particularly innovative. Many technologies have projected computer display remotely for decades