Chromecast has been one of those smaller hardware products that have brought about a meaningful experience upgrade. The first Chromecast solved the pain point of clunky TV software interfaces, making it easier to locate content on your handy smartphone and then play it on your big-screen TV. However, a Court in the US has ruled that Google has infringed upon patents with its Chromecast products and that it should pay $338.7 million in damages because of it.
A Western District of Texas jury has ruled that Google has violated three patents held by a company called Touchstream Technologies, as reported by ArsTechnica. The complaint points to several Chromecast products, including the Chromecast Ultra, the Chromecast with Google TV, and other Chromecast-integrated products.
The first patent application in this complaint was filed in April 2011. The three patents relate to “a system for presenting and controlling content on a display device.”
Further, the complaint claims that Touchstream met with Google in December 2011 but was told that the tech giant wasn’t interested in partnering with it in February 2012. For reference, the first generation Google Chromecast was released in 2013. The latest Chromecast with Google TV (HD) was launched in September 2022, while the 4K variant was launched earlier in September 2020.
Chromecast with Google TV HD box 2 Google opposed the complaint, arguing that the patents are “hardly foundational and do not cover every method of selecting content on a personal device and watching it on another screen.” Further, the Chromecast is said to differ in technologies detailed in Touchstream’s patents.
The jury agreed with Touchstream’s allegations and ordered the company to pay $338.7 million in damages for its patent violations.
Google intends to appeal this decision, as mentioned by their spokesperson in their statement to ArsTechnica.
Companies are notoriously guilty of hindering their competition illegally, usually they don't have a leg to stand on and fold under the weight of tech giants. I hope this is going to start a trend because amazon does the exact same thing.
I'd feel different if there weren't prior art in the form of another companies working product years before they filed the patent. Either that patent isn't valid, or its not close enough to a streaming box to count.
I suspect it is specifically relating to casting. The original Chromecast devices worked very differently than a Roku (but also supports the old casting).
The difference is using a 2nd computing device as a controller it seems, ie using your phone to cast a video to chromecast.
I actually can't believe touchstream won this initial case though because they are definitely a patent troll. The don't make any products themselves they just got an overly broad patent of technology that seemingly already existed (and was pretty obvious) and they go around trying to get companies to pay them licensing fees. And what I read of their patent doesn't even seem like it covers chromecast, they specify a client device -> separate server -> display device not a direct connection to a display device.
The Chromecast still requires an Internet connection though so it's not truly a device to display unless you're mirroring.
Samsung also had casting stuff and I think some of that might predate Chromecast
Might be thinking about DLMA? That wasn't just a Samsung thing but predates this.
Nope, that one was more of an access method for media files. Samsung had these little services which you could mirror your whole screen to (not limited to certain apps like Chromecast), but generally only from Samsung phones.
The first Miracast stuff was introduced in 2012, so that at least precludes Chromecast which apparently debuted in mid 2013. I'm pretty sure the Samsung thing - which was similar - predated that but was more proprietary and didn't have an official standard. I think it was just called something fairly generic like "Samsung Mirroring" etc as a predecessor to "AllShare"