Google Sues $1.3 Million From Patent Troll

Google decided to punish a patent troll that extorted money from customers of the company.

Back in January, Google won a lawsuit against Beneficial Innovations, which demanded royalties from dozens of media sites for infringing on Internet advertising patents. The reason for the lawsuit was that they were customers of the Google Doubleclick banner network, while Google had already paid for the license and protected its customers from paying such royalties.

In January, the court found Google right and ordered a symbolic payment of $ 1 in favor of the plaintiff. But Google's goal was not to protect against trolls, but to attack. The challenge was to defeat Beneficial Innovations on its "homeland," that is, Texas, whose court usually supports patent trolls.

Google soon went on the attack and filed a new lawsuit, forcing the troll to pay almost full compensation for legal costs. On August 26, 2014, the court reviewed the earlier decision and established the amount of compensation in the amount of $ 1.3 million.

This is a small amount for Google (as much as a search engine earns in about 10 minutes of work). But there was a fundamental question - to withdraw money from the troll and fight it to the end, which turned out very successfully. For Beneficial Innovations, this is a much more sensitive amount, because it has spent on litigation itself, and now has to compensate for the costs of the enemy.

However, the amount of compensation was $ 101,000 less than the amount requested because the court refused to compensate the money paid by Google to independent experts who testified in court.

The case involved two Beneficial Innovations patents: 6,712,702, a “continuation” of the infamous patent for network games, and 7,496,943 for a system of displaying ads.



Beneficial Innovations’ patent for online games is listed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as one of the 10 patents that pose the greatest threat to the public domain.

Source: habrahabr.ru/post/234965/