nancy_gohring
Writer

Google hit with patent suit related to Chrome browser

news
Oct 29, 20092 mins

Red Bend says that Google infringes on its patent when it compresses and sends updates to the browser

Israeli company Red Bend filed a lawsuit this week against Google, charging the search giant with infringing one of its patents.

The suit alleges that Google uses Red Bend’s patented technology in Courgette, a method Google uses to compress updates and send them to its Chrome browser.

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Courgette is a compression algorithm that Google developed to shrink the size of updates in order reduce bandwidth requirements for Google and its users, and also to reduce the potential for vulnerabilities, it says on a page describing the technology.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the suit also charges Google with publishing and distributing the source code for Red Bend’s technology. That charge may stem from the fact that Chrome and the Courgette update system are open source.

Red Bend claims that Google has known about the patent, which Red Bend filed for in 1998 and was granted in 2003, since Sept. 7 this year. As a result, Red Bend is asking for triple damages and attorney’s fees.

Google said it had not yet been served with the suit and therefore would not comment on it.

Red Bend, which also has offices in Waltham, Mass., develops software management products primarily for the mobile phone industry. Phone makers, operators and software developers use the products to manage and update their software on phones.

nancy_gohring

Nancy Gohring is a freelance journalist who started writing about mobile phones just in time to cover the transition to digital. She's written about PCs from Hanover, cellular networks from Singapore, wireless standards from Cyprus, cloud computing from Seattle and just about any technology subject you can think of from Las Vegas. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Computerworld, Wired, the Seattle Times and other well-respected publications.

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