Google has once again faced accusations that it copied someone else’s code into Android. Going into detail, Purdue University is suing Google over allegations that the company deliberately infringed a patent for finding power management bugs in the code. The Internet giant allegedly saw an article about Professor Y. Charlie Hu’s research on the subject back in 2012 and included the relevant code in its operating system, which in turn viciously violated copyright.
Moreover, the aforementioned university is even aware of where exactly this code was implemented – in Android Lint, which is a tool for detecting errors in what later became the Android Studio development kit. The US Patent and Trademark Office, meanwhile, issued a patent only in August 2019. Purdue University officials have already said they notified Google of the alleged infringement in August 2021, but the tech giant has continued to include the “controversial code” in Android Studio despite everything. Moreover, this continues even now, in 2022. Now, the school is asking Google to pay unspecified “past and future” damages.
And yes, only now the tech giant has finally decided to somehow comment on this event. Thus, in a statement, Google told the authoritative publication Engadget that the company is “still studying the lawsuit, but will strongly defend itself and independently develop products.” The university responded to this edition of Reuters with a phrase according to which, in its opinion, Google has violated even more patents, and therefore it will add them to the lawsuit if the company does not negotiate licenses.
Be that as it may, and no matter how this confrontation ends, such technology patent lawsuits from educational organizations are nothing new. Apple Corporation, for example, has been repeatedly asked to pay the University of Wisconsin for alleged violations. But one way or another, this particular case has the potential to be much more serious than some others. Android Studio is the main product for Android app development. And in the very event that Purdue University can prove a violation, then it can claim that a significant part of the Android app ecosystem is built on copied technologies.
