US Supreme Court Rejects Google Patent Appeal Case Over Street View

Google Inc will have to defend claims that its Street View mapping software violates patents held by Vederi LLC after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the company's appeal.

The high court's decision not to hear the case leaves intact a March 2014 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which threw out a district judge's finding that Google had not infringed on four different patents. The case will now return to lower courts for further proceedings.

Vederi sued Google in 2010. The company says Google infringed on its patents, which concern ways of creating images of a geographical area that can be navigated by computer.

Street View is a product that enables users to navigate images of streets created from a series of photographic images taken by cameras positioned on the top of cars.

The Obama administration, responding to a request from the court for its views, asked the justices not to take the case.

The case is Google Inc. v. Vederi LLC, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 14-448.

Earlier this month, Apple said it was driving vehicles around the world to collect data that will be used to improve Apple Maps.

The camera-equipped vehicles deployed by Apple will give its Maps app functions similar to Google's Street View.

Street View, launched in 2007, gives users a panoramic imagery of public roads. The service automatically detects and blurs identifiable faces and vehicle number plates.

Eager to contrast its mapping efforts with the controversial Street View campaign by Google, Apple said it would blur faces and licence plates on collected images prior to publication to protect privacy.

Written with inputs from Reuters