Google Sued for Patent Infringement Over Google Docs, Drive

Google was served this week with a patent infringement lawsuit that said the search giant's Drive and Docs products violate a 1999 software patent owned by SuperSpeed.

Massachusetts-based SuperSpeed claims to own the technology that allows quick access to a common disk on multiple computers, purportedly similar to what Google used to build its Drive and Docs features.

SuperSpeed is seeking an injunction to prevent Google's unlicensed use of SuperSpeed's methods, and is requesting that the search engine giant pay a reasonable royalty fee, according to a copy of the complaint posted online by GigaOm.

EEC Systems applied for and received the patent in question back in June 1999; SuperSeed later acquired EEC. The patent covers caching methods, which help speed up the shared-disk cluster network process, SuperSpeed said in the suit. According to the complaint, Google has infringed, and continues to do so, on the original patent, causing irreparable harm and damage to SuperSpeed, the company said.

Google did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

As noted by GigaOm, patents like the one owned by SuperSpeed have been rather controversial in recent years, prompting criticism of the U.S. Patent Office for approving too many patent applications.

Google launched Google Drive in April, which offers 5GB of free cloud storage to anyone with a Google account. For more, see PCMag's full review of Google Drive and the slideshow below.

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