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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Google Accused of Patent Infringement

HOUSTON (CN) - Google's "Google Docs" and "Google Drive" products violate a software company's patented caching technology, which speeds up data processing for networked computers, SuperSpeed LLC claims in Federal Court.

SuperSpeed, of Sudbury, Mass., says its software "is designed to work in a network environment known as a shared-disk cluster," by which multiple computers communicate with each other and retrieve data from hard discs.

"For example, a bank might have hundreds of computers as part of its network, some for employees handling customer service calls, others for employees running credit checks for loan applications, and so forth," the complaint states. "Each of these computers needs access to the bank's customer's credit card records, which are stored on a series of hard disks.

"A shared-disk cluster permits any one of the computers to communicate across the network with the credit card database on the hard disks, retrieve records for a particular customer, and make changes that will then be available to all other users on the network.

"Accessing data on hard disks and other mechanical storage devices is a relatively

slow process. The speed of data processing operations that require regular access to data on such devices can be significantly impeded by the time required for the computer to communicate with the disk. When multiple computers are all drawing data from the same disk, the process is even slower.

"Superspeed's software helps overcome this problem by permitting data 'caching' in a shared-disk cluster network. 'Caching' accelerates data processing operations by making a copy of frequently accessed data in the random access memory (or 'RAM') of the individual computer that is using the data.

"A computer can access data in RAM approximately two-hundred-thousand times faster than data on a hard disk. As a result, caching can increase performance dramatically, particularly when the computer must repeatedly access the same block of data."

SuperSpeed says its predecessor, EEC Systems, obtained patents for its caching technology in June 1999, the year it took over the company.

"SuperSpeed applied for and received additional patents on data caching methods," the complaint states.

SuperSpeed claims Google is infringing on its patent by making and selling "Google Docs" and "Google Drive" products.

It seeks an injunction to stop Google's unlicensed use, and damages "in an amount no less than a reasonable royalty."

SuperSpeed is represented by Neal Manne with Susman Godfrey in Houston.

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