So yeah, I’m bringing back the topic of Google Play Music. It was shut down pretty out of the blue, so all the users who were invested in that platform were told off with a “Well, we have YouTube Music too now, you know”. But see, it’s never that easy.
Because, as Reuters reported, the Big G now owes $15 million buckaroos for patent infringement related to the now defunct platform.
Image credit – PhoneArena
Cool, so this verdict stems from a jury in Delaware, where the court sided with Personal Audio LLC — a patent holding company — about Google violating its patent rights, related to:
- Playlist downloading
- Playlist navigation
- Playlist editing features
And yes, somehow basic playlist-related features are also not immune to the patent trolls.
Not only that, but the verdict states that Google infringed these patents “willfully”. We’ll save you the elaborate legal explanation and summarize the outcome of this detail as: this word allow money debt go up. Money good.
Jose Castaneda, representing Google, shared that the plan is to appeal this decision. And that only makes sense, because who waits until a product is taken off the market in order to sue its maker for patent infringement? That’s cartoon levels of evil!
As with most things related to Big Tech and legal battles — only time will tell what may happen. And since we’ve brought the topic back up from the past: let’s have a moment of silence for our brothers and sisters, who actually used Google Play Music. We hope that you like YouTube Music more now.
