Security company loses Android patent fight

Smartphone makers including HTC, Motorola and Samsung have claimed victory in a patent battle against digital security company Gemalto over the Android operating system.

The companies, all users of Android, were targeted by French-based Gemalto who claimed they were infringing three of its patents related to computer chip technology.

But the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with the three smartphone makers, as well as Android’s owner Google, with a judgment of non-infringement.

Germalto initially filed a lawsuit at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, in 2010.

It claimed that its patents were developed in the 1990s at the company’s research and development facilities in Texas.

The patents, US numbers 6,308,317, 7,117,485, and 7,818,727 centred on a way to allow low-power devices to run "high-level programming languages, such as Java."

Gemalto said that the accused smartphone manufacturers infringed their patent when they "temporarily load programme instructions from off-chip memory into on-chip cache memory before execution."

In a summary judgment, issued later that year, the District Court rejected Germalto’s claims and said cache memory was “substantially different” from permanent memory and “not equivalent for infringement purposes".

Germalto appealed, but on Thursday, June 19, the Appeals Court upheld the initial decision.

“We agree with the district court that the accused devices do not infringe under the doctrine of equivalents due to their use of cache memory,” the judgment said.

Olivier Piou, chief executive at Gemalto said it was “disappointed” with the ruling as it had “consistently patented and broadly licensed its innovation”.

“This decision has no impact on our historical patents licensing activity, nor on the Company’s 2017 long-term objectives,” Piou added.