Chrome sandbox violates three patents, Google will pay royalties

Illustration from patent of Ciofi and Rosman, who invented the sandbox in the browser

A federal court in East Texas ruled that Google infringed three software patents to protect against malware — the so-called sandbox — and awarded $ 20 million in compensation to the inventor of the system and his partner’s family. In the future, Google will pay royalties for using the sandbox in Chrome.

According to the lawyer of the plaintiff from the law firm Vasquez Benisek & Lindgren LLP, the $ 20 million penalty covers the last four years when Google illegally used the invention, and the royalties are calculated for the next nine years while the patents are valid. Based on the rate of $ 5 million per year, the inventors can count on another $ 45 million. In total, the invention (patenting) of the sandbox will bring $ 65 million to enterprising engineers and their families.

Year after year, the infamous East Texas Federal Court handles hundreds of patent infringement cases, often backed by so-called “patent trolls.” They aim at buying up patents and soliciting cash payments.
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No wonder that another lawsuit against Google for infringing computer patents on the Google Chrome browser sandbox was considered in the East Texas court. And this court ruled in favor of the plaintiff. True, here the patent trolls did not participate in the process, but this made the judicial verdict not less strange.

The story began in 2013, when the lawsuit against Google was filed by the inventor Alfonso Cioffi (Alfonso Cioffi) and the family of his partner Allen Frank Rozman (Allen Frank Rozman). Initially, the plaintiffs claimed the violation of four patents describing "the system and method of protecting a computer system from malicious software." All four patents were reissued (US Reissue Patent) in 2012, four years after the Google Chrome browser was released.

2013 suit


These are the following reissued patents:

• US Reissue Patent RE43,103 ;
• US Reissue Patent RE43,500 ;
• US Reissue Patent RE43,528 ;
• US Reissue Patent RE43,529 .

All four patents are derived from the original US patent No. 7,484,247 , issued January 27, 2009, one year after the appearance of the Chrome browser. An application for that patent was filed on August 7, 2004.

A patent describes a method for protecting a PC from malware by segregating suspicious software and moving it to run in a secure, isolated part of a computer (sandbox). In the reissued patents, computer processes are described that are separated from each other logically or physically (on separate processors) into the first and second processes in the browser. Potential malware from the Internet is sent for execution to the second browser process and is not allowed to be executed outside this process. Thus, the potential malware is isolated and cannot damage other elements of the computer system, including the memory address space from the first browser process.

In other words, the patent describes a specific example of how a sandbox works in the Chrome browser. The description in the patent is accompanied by a graphic illustration that clearly indicates the isolation of processes for the safe execution of the code of potential malware.

In 2014, district judge Rodney Gilstrap dismissed the case on the grounds that the plaintiffs recognized the impossibility of winning the process with the interpretation of the patents that the court accepted (namely, with the interpretation of the term “web browser process” from the patent). The judge interpreted the phrase “web browser process” as if it concerned only software with direct access to data on the website.

But that was only the beginning. The law firm representing the interests of the plaintiff regrouped its forces, rejected claims for a too-generic patent RE43,103 - and filed an appeal. She was successful. In 2015, the US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge Gilstrap’s decision and pointed to the “simple and usual meaning” of the phrase “web browser process.”

Google applied to the US Supreme Court with a request to reconsider the decision of the US Court of Appeals in the federal district, but in January 2017, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case .

Despite the judicial verdict, Google does not think to give up. “We remain confident that these patents are invalid and that Google Chrome’s browser does not violate them,” said a company spokesman. “We evaluate our options [further action].”

If Google’s attempts to reconsider the case fail, the company will have to pay $ 20 million in damages and an indefinite amount of royalties in the next nine years, while the sandbox patents will be valid. The exact size of the royalties is not set, it will depend on the popularity of Chrome, as well as other Google software products that use the patented sandbox - these are the Android and Chrome OS operating systems.