Google Inc has been ordered by an Appeals court to face renewed patent infringement claims over its Street View mapping system. Bloomberg said in a news report that the search engine owner will have to fend off claims by Vederi LCC that it has infringed the latter's four patents by creating images for visually navigating a geographic area.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had said in a opinion published on its website today that the lower court judge had erred in his interpretation of the coverage of the four Vederi patent allegedly infringed by Google. The Street View, which has been made available to the public since 2007, allows used to view an address or a street corner in several angles.
Bloomberg said the privately-held Vederi claimed that Google has incorporated its inventions for methods of creating images that when combined could project an image of an area in different angles. The said infringement of such patents date back to 2000. On the other hand, Google rejected the claims on the basis that the product of Vederi's patents resulted to flat images as compared to the spherical ones Street View offered.
A trial judge who have presided the case sided with Google and dismissed Vederi's claims. Bloomberg said the Federal Circuit, which is composed of a trio of judges, said Vederi's patents are about the use of a fish-eye lens, which creates curved images when used to take images and that the trial judge was wrong to interpret that the process of taking photos was not as limited as the trial judge initially thought. The news agency said the panel had issued an order for the presiding trial judge to open and review the case and rule based on the new interpretation.
When Bloomberg asked the Mountain View, California-based company about the Federal Circuit's verdict, Google spokesman Matt Kallman said the firm has no immediate comment.
