A Texas jury has reportedly ruled against Internet search services provider, Google, Inc., US, in a suit that alleged some of its use of open source Linux code amounted to patent infringement. In the verdict, the jury decided that Google should pay $5 million for the infringement. This ruling is believed to have big implications for other companies using Linux technology and other open source systems.
The suit, filed in June 2009 by Bedrock Computer Technologies, also named the likes of Yahoo, MySpace, Amazon, PayPal, Match.com and AOL as defendants in the suit. The firm filed the suit against the defendants in question for violation of Patent 5,893,120, detailing methods and apparatus for information storage and retrieval using a hashing technique with external chaining and on-the-fly removal of expired data.
The ruling is reportedly the first patent infringement award over the Linux kernel, which is used in all versions of the operating system, including the Android smartphone software.
Search for more Google related information
To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.
