Google Sued By A Mobile Software Company
Google has been sued by a mobile software development company Red Bend Software Inc. Red Bend alleges Google of infringement of a patent it holds that is used in Google’s Chrome browser. Red Bend says that it developed a technology that allows wireless carriers to efficiently distribute updates for mobile-phone software. Wondering how does Chrome come in here? Well, Chrome uses an algorithm called Courgette (explained here in Google-Developer-Documentation, if you are geek take my advice and lick this document you won’t regret it!) which essentially does something similar. Courgette is differential compression algorithm that helps Chrome provide highly compress software updates. Yes, that is some 9 times more compressed than ‘bsdiff’- the algorithm Google used for Chrome updates before Courgette. Red Bend was awarded a patent(US-Patent:6526552) in April 2003 that states it is a “method for generating a compact difference result between an old program and a new program“. Now, what seriously is amazing me are 2 things-
1). Red Bend says that Google was aware about this issue since September 7.
2). If Red Bend is right then Google has seriously damaged Red Bend by not only using its patented technology but also making it open sourced. This will make almost impossible for Red Bend to track who is using its IP.