U.S. Supreme Court rejects Google patent appeal over Street View

WASHINGTON 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.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)