Google ordered to pay $5 million in Linux patent infringement suit

Score one for the little guy. An East Texas jury recently awarded a relatively small computer firm a pretty hefty settlement in a patent infringement suit that named Google, Yahoo, Amazon, AOL, and Myspace as defendants. The jury awarded Bedrock Computer Technologies LLC $5 million for a patent concerning the Linux kernel found in the software behind Google's servers. The patent in question is described as a "method and apparatus for information storage and retrieval using a hashing technique with external chaining and on-the-fly removal of expired data." It appears Google is the first of the defendants to face a judgement, but we have a feeling this decision might have set a precedent. Of course, no infringement suit would be complete without a healthy helping of appeals -- and considering the decision came from a district court, we can almost guarantee this case is no exception. You didn't expect the big guys to stay down for the count, did you?

Google ordered to pay $5 million in Linux patent infringement suit originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/21/google-ordered-to-pay-5-million-in-linux-patent-infringement-su/

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