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Mobile phone software maker Red Bend Software Inc. is suing Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), claiming the search giant’s open-source Chrome browser isn’t so open source after all.
According to a lawsuit filed in Boston district court yesterday, Chrome allegedly infringes one of the Waltham company’s patents on a method allowing wireless carriers to efficiently push out updates to mobile phone firmware.
Chrome contains an algorithm, called Courgette, designed to allow Google to push out compressed software updates to users more efficiently. Courgette is one of a class of tools called differential compression algorithms, which allow developers to write updates into an existing version of an application, rather than replacing the entire application. According to Google’s developer documentation, Courgette is a more efficient way to identify where and how changes must be made in the code.
According to Red Bend, however, Courgette infringes its patent no. 6546552, issued in April, 2003 — one of three U.S. patents the company holds. The patent covers “a method for generating a compact difference result between an old program and a new program,” according to its abstract.
Red Bend is seeking treble damages, alleging Google has known about the conflicting patent since September 7. Further damage occurred, Red Bend alleges, when Google published the Courgette source code in order to allow access for members of its open-source developer community.
A Red Bend spokeswoman declined to comment for this article, citing the ongoing litigation. A Google spokesman said the company had not yet been served with the complaint and therefore could not comment on the allegations.
Red Bend controls 53 percent of the market for software that allows cellular providers to do firmware-over-the-air (FOTA) updates, according to a report out last month from the research group Ovum. The company, which is a subsidiary of Israel-based Red Bend Ltd., closed its fifth round of venture capital financing last April. Backers Greylock Partners and Coral Capital Management put in $10 million, bringing the company’s total investment to $34 million.
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