US Supreme Court throws out request to hear Google's case over the patent implementation in its Street View technology

Jun 23, 2015 06:44 GMT  ·  By

The lawsuit brought against Google for its Street View service will continue, according to Reuters, after the US Supreme Court denied a request to take Google's appeal.

In a very complex lawsuit, Google is now forced to continue to defend its Street View technology after a series of legal procedures force it to go in the US lower courts again.

Vederi holds a patent for viewing geographical images via a computer

The root of all the problems stands in a 2010 lawsuit started by Vederi LLC, which held a pattern for assembling images of a geographical area and then allowing users to view and navigate them using a computer.

In September 2012, after two years of deliberation, a district court ruled in favor of Google, claiming that Vederi's patent only covered flat imagery and not the curved photos Google uses for its service.

As expected, Vederi took the lawsuit to a federal court and after further proceedings, in March 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the district court's decision.

In August 2014, Google then filed a request to the US Supreme Court to hear the case, on which the Court solicited the opinion of the Obama administration.

The White House gave a negative response, and now the US Supreme Court has rejected Google's request, which indirectly means the company will have to go back in the lower courts and re-defend its interpretation of the Vederi patents.

Google wins another, unrelated case with the US Supreme Court

On a very busy day for Google's lawyers, in another case judged by the US Supreme Court, the company scored an 'indirect' win for the privacy of its users.

With a 5 to 4 ruling, the US Supreme Court has decided to side with hotel owners in a dispute over a Los Angeles city ordinance which allowed the police to seize information from their clients without a warrant .

Even if the case did not involve Google directly, the company chose to participate nevertheless, mainly because it could be a stepping stone for further actions on other business ventures, including its own, where data is seized from Google's data centers without warrants or informing the user prior to this action.