Google's Android lawsuit ghost returns

By Carl Bagh: Subscribe to Carl's RSS feed

October 26, 2010 1:12 PM EDT

Google Dalvik virtual machine is under fire again, as Gemalto, a digital security provider, has filed a patent infringement case against Google, Samsung, Motorola and HTC.

At the center of the lawsuit is Gemalto's Java Card Technology which allows applications developed in Java to be executed in resource limited devices like smart cards and mobile phones. It filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Friday.

It states that Google uses the aforementioned technology both in development of applications built on Android and in running its Dalvik virtual machine, which is used to run Android application on resource-restricted devices like smartphones.

It further cited that Google makes available to OEMs Android apps that use its Java Card Technology, which includes apps like Google Talk, Google Maps, Google Voice, Google Calendar, Gmail etc.

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Gemalto has said that three of its patents have been infringed.

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The lawsuit follows a similar patent infringement case filed by Oracle that charged Google with using a certain class of libraries from Apache Harmony Library, an open source implementation of Java from the Apache Software Foundation, in its Dalvik virtual machine. Project Harmony was not able to avail of technology compatibility kit (TCK) from Sun Microsystems, which is now with Oracle, which would have licensed the project.

According to Alexander Poltorak, Chairman and CEO, General Patent Corporation, companies file patent lawsuits primarily to gain a permanent injunction or to obtain monetary compensation. He further said it is usually small companies and non-practicing entities that exercise patent lawsuits for monetary compensation.

In the case of Gemalto it is not directly intending to use the patent to create a smartphone OS and thus is using the lawsuit to gain some monetary compensation in the form of royalties rather than seeking a permanent injunction which any other major smartphone maker would have pursued to protect its market share.

However, Gemalto's patent infringement case attests to the march of Google's Android and revenue generation possibilities it is creating. Google on Monday reported that its Android Market reached the 100,000 apps milestone. Google also claims that currently 200,000 Android units are activated each day.

With such a reach Android offers great revenue generation possibilities, even to non-practicing entities who hold patents they do not intend to use to create smartphones by way of filing patent lawsuits.

This article is copyrighted by International Business Times, the business news leader