The Purdue Research Foundation (PRF), part of Purdue University, has filed a lawsuit against Google alleging that a part of Android’s code violates one of Purdue’s patents. Purdue filed the lawsuit with a Texas federal court.
The foundation has asked the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to grant royalties for the use of its patent in addition to damages from the search giant.
This patent pertains to a system that can detect power management bugs within the code. The West Lafayette, Indiana-based university credits one of its professors, Y. Charlie Hu, for the invention of this technology.
The lawsuit claims that Google came across Professor Hu’s research on the matter in 2012 and subsequently embedded some of the code into Android Lint. For those unaware, Lint is a tool that can scan project source files for potential bugs or programming mistakes. This tool exists inside Android Studio and is a big part of Android app development.
The PRF received the patent for this error detecting tool in 2019
According to Purdue, an article containing the professor’s research made its way to an Android forum in 2012. Following this, a Google engineer allegedly copied this code onto Android. It’s worth noting that Purdue received a patent for this technology in 2019. The school has reportedly sent a notice of infringement to Google in August last year (via Reuters).
A spokesperson for the university said Google infringes on other Purdue patents. Purdue told Engadget that it spent “weeks” trying to set up a meeting with Google representatives but to no avail.
“The suit against Google was filed after a year-long pre-suit investigation that revealed Google’s willful infringement of multiple PRF patents. PRF attempted for weeks to set up a meeting with Google, but when Google refused reasonable conditions for a meeting, Purdue was left with no option but to initiate suit,” the statement read.
“[P]RF is the assignee of multiple additional patents Google infringes. Purdue has again invited Google to meet, see the evidence of infringement, and discuss license terms. If Google continues to refuse to negotiate a license, the suit will be amended to add patents.”
Meanwhile, Google spokesperson José Castañeda said the company would “vigorously defend” itself. However, no additional details were provided.
2022-02-03 15:05:18