The France-based digital security firm, Gemalto Corp, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, Samsung, High Tech Computer (HTC) Corporation, and Motorola, in a U.S. District Court in Texas, in a case relating to alleged patent infringement with Google’s mobile operating system, Google Android.
The patents in question relate to the Google Dalvik virtual machine, a technology that converts and executes Java apps on its Android operating system.
The virtual machine firstly converts .class Java apps to Dalvik Executable files and then executes the files to run the apps more efficiently on memory sensitive devices such as smartphones.
The Dalvik technology is open-source, but the way the process is done allegedly infringes on the Gemalto held patents in the U.S. that relate to how software using program languages like Java are run on resource constrained devices.
Companies have long argued software patents (especially generic ones) should not be awarded to firms since the technology is mostly standardized across many products.
The lawsuit targets the phone makers as well because they sell Google Android powered devices, which allegedly illegally infringe on Gemalto held technology patents.
Gemalto says it would not comment on the litigation process.
The defendants were not available for comment.
According to market research data published by the Gartner Research Group, Google’s Android operating system is now the most popular mobile OS in the U.S., edging out top rivals including RIM’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iOS platforms thanks to an influx of lower end devices that saturated the market space.
In the last fiscal year, Gemalto reported total revenues of about $2.3-billion USD.
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