Google Accused of Infringing Motion, Orientation Patents With Pixel Phones
A Taiwanese technology company on Monday accused Google Inc. in Delaware federal court of infringing two motion-sensing patents with its line of Pixel cellphones.
April 17, 2018 at 05:12 PM
3 minute read
A Taiwanese technology company on Monday accused Google Inc. in Delaware federal court of infringing two motion-sensing patents with its line of Pixel cellphones.
CyWee Group, which claims “one of the most significant” patent portfolios in the tech industry, said in a 40-page complaint that Google's Pixel, Pixel 2, Pixel XL and Pixel 2 XL phones use its patented systems for processing a phone's motion and orientation. The technology, CyWee said, has become central to navigation, gaming and, increasingly, augmented-and virtual reality applications for mobile devices.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, was the latest to accuse a major American tech company of infringing CyWee's so-called '438 and '978 patents, which the company obtained in 2013. The company, which is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands but headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, has made similar claims against other companies in Texas, Washington and California federal courts.
According to CyWee, the inventions helped to eliminate errors in earlier technology by fusing measurements collected from different types of motion sensors. For navigation and gaming applications, the company said, the improvements allow the displays on smartphone screens to automatically move or rotate while in use.
But CyWee also said that its patents were crucial to augmented reality and virtual reality applications, which typically require mobile devices to render three-dimensional images. While other methods exist for estimating orientation, many rely on cameras and vision algorithms that are not suited to most mobile users or applications, the company said.
Both patents represented a “technological solution to a technological problem,” that made them valid and patent-eligible, CyWee's attorneys at Stamoulis & Weinblatt and Shore Chan DePumpo said in the filing.
Google press representatives did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday on the allegations raised in CyWee's complaint.
The lawsuit accuses Google of direct and indirect infringement, and seeks damages, as well as a permanent injunction barring Google from making and selling any infringing devices.
Similar suits from CyWee have recently targeted Samsung, Apple Inc. and HTC Corp. According to court documents, the case against Apple was settled in 2017, while judges in Texas and Washington have allowed CyWee to amend its complaints against Samsung and HTC respectively after initially dismissing the lawsuits for faulty pleading.
In the Delaware case, CyWee is represented by Stamatios Stamoulis and Richard C. Weinblatt of Stamoulis & Weinblatt in Wilmington and Michael W. Shore, Alfonso G. Chan, Christopher Evans, Ari B. Rafilson, William D. Ellerman and Paul T. Beeler of Shore Chan in Dallas.
An online docket-tracking service did not list counsel for Google on Tuesday.
The case, captioned CyWee Group v. Google, has not yet been assigned to a judge.
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