Jury Finds Google Not Guilty of Infringing on Oracle Patents

[Guest]

Looks like Google's won a round in the Oracle v. Google patent wars...

Jury Finds Google Not Guilty of Infringing on Oracle Patents : Read more

 

[willard]

Tom's Guide, yesterday's news today!

 

[hoof_hearted]

And I thought Java was an open source language.

 

[alidan]

i wish businesses had to pay for all the court crap, and not just the lawyers.

the jurry also deserves far more than they are payed.

 

[zapata07]

Yuck, this article is not factually correct at all.

"Google has yet to be handed its punishment for being found guilty of infringing on some of Java’s APIs"

Wrong. Google is NOT been found guilty of infringing on some Java's APIs. Why?

1. First, because there was also a Google defense alleging that, even if it had infringed those APIs, it should be considered fair use. If Google was to win this, there would be no copyright infringement because it would have been considered fair use. The jury didn't reach a decision on this. Therefore, at most this issue will have to go to trial again.

2. Even if Google had lost the two issues (that it has been found infringing the API copyrights and that it was not fair use usage), there's still a major thing pending a judge decision: if the APIs can be copyrightable at all ! If the judge rules that the APIs cannot be copyrighted it doesn't matter would the jury has said or will say: there's not Google infringement. Most people think that the judge will rule against copyrightability.

All in all, currently, Oracle was won basically squat: by mistake, Google did copy 9 lines of code (which the judge already said, basically, that they are trivial and worth less than peanuts) and which Google already removed from more recent versions of Android and also nine test files which never made it into Android.

It is shaping up to be a total defeat by Oracle. Of course they will appeal and appeal but it's very doubtful that this will get them anything, apart from mounting lawyer bills.

 

[slabbo]

the lawyer tried to say that out of the 10 - 15 million lines of code that compose android systems that the 9 lines to create a checksum were stolen by google in an attempt to make it to market faster, and even went along to say that it could have saved them upwards of 6 months of time.
the judge stopped him right there and goes, now granted I'm not a java developer, but I've written checksums hundreds of times in the past, I could write them, you could write them, they only take around 5 minutes to write and that them being similar is a coincidence. They would probably have spent more time actually stealing the code then writing it themselves.

 

[freggo]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]i wish businesses had to pay for all the court crap, and not just the lawyers.the jurry also deserves far more than they are payed.[/citation]

Looser should automatically have to pay all bills; including those of the winner.
Would cut down on fraudulent law suits and on bullying by the big boys.

 

[PhilFrisbie]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]i wish businesses had to pay for all the court crap, and not just the lawyers.the jurry also deserves far more than they are payed.[/citation]
Open Source != free

There is free software, open source software, and free open source software. It all depends on the actual license used. . .

 

[willard]

[citation][nom]freggo[/nom]Looser should automatically have to pay all bills; including those of the winner.Would cut down on fraudulent law suits and on bullying by the big boys.[/citation]
They frequently do. The problem is, court costs are nothing compared to the amounts being sued for. It's a low risk, high reward thing.

 

[eddieroolz]

I'm quite amazed that Google was absolved of all wrongdoing, especially that the jury did agree that Google infringed on six lines of code. It was matter of how much infringement, not if.