Google Accused of Infringing Smartphone Anti-Theft Tech Patent

Google has been hit with a lawsuit alleging its Pixel smartphones and other devices infringe a New York company’s patent for mobile phone theft-alert technology.

Safety Direct LLC accused Google and its parent company Alphabet, Inc.of infringing US Patent No. 10,115,292, which describes its “automatic loss prevention alert software” system. If a mobile phone using the system physically moves beyond a user-defined distance, a visual and audio alarm are activated.

The technology is designed to address the problem of stolen smartphones, which now possess owners’ financial information and process payments through applications like Android Pay and Apple Pay. …