San Francisco — It is rightly said that the larger and more successful you become, the bigger a target you are. That certainly seems to be the case when you are Google, as it would appear the company is facing “a legal trouble a day” lately. Today, it was revealed that “Skyhook,” a well-regarded location firm is suing search engine giant Google for infringing its location patents and for forcing Motorola to terminate agreements the phone manufacturer signed with the company.
According to media reports, barely two days ago, Skyhook Wireless, a Boston-based company that developed a technology for determining geographical location using WiFi as the underlying reference system, issued a press release titled “Skyhook Adds Location Engine to Layer App for Android.” Now, however, things have turned sour between Skyhook and Google, as the former company’s sued the latter for business interference and patent infringement.
Location service vendor Skyhook on Wednesday filed two lawsuits against Google, claiming the search giant infringed patents and interfered with contracts it signed with Motorola and another company. Both the suits were filed in Massachusetts, but the patent infringement suit was filed in federal court, while the case involving the contract dispute was filed in Suffolk County, where Boston’s Skyhook is headquartered.
According to Skyhook, Google licensed the technology in 2005, which Google used its control over Android and Google Maps to bar Skyhook’s mapping technology from Motorola’s Android handsets in preference to the search engine company’s own technology, and that Google’s mapping technology violates four Skyhook patents.
The federal case is relatively simple, accusing Google of violating four location patents: No. 7,414,988, entitled “Server for Updating Location Beacon Database”; No. 7,433,694, entitled “Location Beacon Database”; No. 7,474,897, entitled “Continuous Data Optimization by Filtering and Positioning Systems”; and No. 7,305,245, entitled “Location-Based Services That Choose Location Algorithms Based on Number of Detected Access Points Within Range of User Device”.
When Google unleashed its Google Location Service technology earlier this year, Skyhook apparently found the technology a little close for comfort. In that case, Skyhook has asked Google for damages and for the court to enjoin the company from further violations of the patent.
Picking up adjacent wireless access points (over 250 million of them) and proprietary algorithms, Skyhook says it has created a unique WiFi Positioning System (WPS) that can pinpoint a phone’s location within 20 to 30 meters (65 to 95 feet).
Both the lawsuits alleges Google of violating Skyhook’s location-based XPS technology with its own, known as the Google Location Service. The Boston-based location vendor said it spent “tens of millions of dollars” mapping the locations of 250 million Wi-Fi access points, which, if a device attached to it, can be used to quickly identify its location much faster and more accurately than either GPS or cell-phone-tower triangulation. Skyhook also alleges that the Google Location Service is part of the Android OEM contract, meaning that Google has created a closed system with respect to location.
In an interesting turn of events, the harshly-worded lawsuit also accuses Google for interfering with Skyhook’s contracts with Motorola. Specifically, the complaint regarding business interference filed in Massachusetts state court (embedded below) states that Google’s Andy Rubin, head of the Android project, demanded that Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha drop Skyhook’s technology from Motorola handsets or Google would remove Android certification from those handsets.
While wordy, the accusation is worth reading in its entirety: “As none of these devices was preloaded with (Skyhook’s) software, as would have occurred but for Google’s interference, Skyhook lost millions of dollars in royalties provided under the Motorola Contract,” Skyhook wrote in the complaint. “Google’s interference also harmed Skyhook by preventing enhancements to Skyhook’s database that would have occurred but for the deprivation of data from these phones.”
Google representatives said that the company had not been served with the suit as yet, and therefore could not comment.
This could be a compelling fight, considering that Skyhook may have a fair amount of money to pursue the matter and obviously isn’t just a professional troll. Skyhook is seeking a permanent injunction preventing Google from interfering with Skyhook’s customers, plus financial damages of tens of millions of dollars.