If Google is one of the most prominent Linux stalwarts around, Android is undoubtedly the public face of its love affair with the open source operating system. But its Linux affection runs deeper than that as the Internet behemoth uses the OS on everything from back-end servers to employee machines. Now, that deep-rooted love is beginning to cost Google, for a jury has fined it $5 million for infringing on a patent (U.S. Patent No. 5,893,120) held by Texas-bases patent troll Bedrock Computer Technologies.Google was not the only company sued by Bedrock for the
infringement of the said patent, but a lot of other companies that use Linux for their operations, including Yahoo!, Amazon, Paypal, AOL and Match.com, were named as defendants in the suit filed in 2009. Bedrock alleges that many versions of the Linux kernel infringe on the patent-in-suit.
While many experts see this decision as having far-reaching consequences for the open source community and Google, others like ZDNet's Linux and open source blogger Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols are baffled by the “idiotic anti-Linux & Google decision.” That said, Vaughan-Nicholas, like many others, isn't too surprised that the decision has come from a court notorious for its pro-patent stance: the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Texas (EDTX).
The big G, meanwhile, has vowed to fight on: “Google will continue to defend against attacks like this one on the open source community. The recent explosion in patent litigation is turning the world’s information highway into a toll road, forcing companies to spend millions and millions of dollars defending old, questionable patent claims, and wasting resources that would be much better spent investing in new technologies for users and creating jobs.”
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