These aren’t really patent trolls, though. They made a technology, patented it and produced a product. Google met with them, but decided not to pay for the patent owner’s technology and made their own instead.
“Made a technology”
Did they actually make anything, or did the CEO just patent an idea without ever putting it in production?
Because latter would be the textbook description of patent trolls. An idea is just an idea, if you can’t execute it, the patent should be null and void.
On another note I have to say that such an obvious solution of “moving content from a small screen to the big screen” should hardly be patentable. It’s quite literally just RPC, which has been in use in various shapes and forms for over 60 years.
A couple quick searches and a skim read, they’re offering their technology under their main brand Touchstream as well as another called Shodogg. It’s not the same as Chromecast of course, but as the patent holder they have a right to market the technology as they see fit.
I haven’t looked at the patents themselves, but I reckon it’s a bit more involved than and significantly different enough to a simple remote procedure call. It’s not like a server delivering video to a client, instead it’s switching from displaying on the server to the client. RCP is initiated by the client, while casting is initiated by the server.
This really seems more like Google trying to get away with not paying an inventor than an inventor sitting on their patent and denying society the fruits.
