Oracle and Google Settlement Talks Falter; Trial Set for April 16 118
Fluffeh writes "Recently, a Judge ordered Oracle and Google to have yet another sit down and chat, but these talks have come to an impasse: 'Despite their diligent efforts and those of their able counsel, the parties have reached an irreconcilable impasse in their settlement discussions,' Judge Paul Grewal of US District Court for the Northern California wrote Monday. 'No further conferences shall be convened. The parties should instead direct their entire attention to the preparation of their trial presentations. Good luck.'"
Re:Oracle and Google should compensate the jury (Score:5, Informative)
I'd be mad as hell if I was on that jury for weeks or months and got some stipend like $50 day, parking tickets not included.
Jurors are paid an attendance fee of $40.00 per day. Regardless of means of travel, jurors also receive round-trip mileage from their home to the courthouse at the rate currently authorized by the Internal Revenue Service. The court validates juror parking at specific parking lots near the courthouse and reimburses bridge tolls when applicable.
Source:http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/juryfaq#question_6 [uscourts.gov]
Re:Just remember. (Score:5, Informative)
poetmatt takes any opportunity to slide in an anti-microsoft comment
How can it be anti-Microsoft when it's a simple statement of fact.
http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/02/how-microsoft-pays-big-money-to-smear-google-audaciously/ [falkvinge.net]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/07/icomp_productivity_commission/ [theregister.co.uk]
http://techrights.org/2011/08/08/burson-marsteller-busted/ [techrights.org]
Re:Just remember. (Score:5, Informative)
"An Ars Technica article sources Groklaw stating that at Portugal's national body TC meeting, "representatives from Microsoft attempted to argue that Sun Microsystems, the creators and supporters of the competing OpenDocument format (ODF), could not be given a seat at the conference table because there was a lack of chairs."[37]
In Sweden, Microsoft notified the Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) that an employee sent a memo to two of its partners, requesting them to join the SIS committee and vote in favor of Office Open XML in return for "marketing contributions".[38] Jason Matusow, a Director in the Corporate Standards Strategy Team at Microsoft, stated that the memo was the action of an individual employee acting outside company policy, and that the memo was retracted as soon as it was discovered.[citation needed] SIS have since changed its voting procedure so that a member has to actually participate before he is allowed to vote.[39] Sweden invalidated its vote (80% was for approval) as one company cast more than one vote, which is against SIS policy.[40]
Finnish IT journalists described that meeting as raising strong differences in opinions.[41][42]
In Switzerland, SNV registered a vote of "approval with comments," and there was some criticism about a "conflict of interest" regarding the chairman of the UK 14 sub-committee, who did not allow discussion of licensing, economic and political arguments.[43][44] In addition, the chairman of the relevant SNV parent committee is also the secretary general of Ecma International[citation needed], which approved OOXML as a standard. Further complaints regarded "committee stuffing", which is however allowed by present SNV rules, and non-adherence to SNV rules by the UK 14 chairman, which resulted in a re-vote with the same result.[citation needed]
Australia's national standards body, Standards Australia, was criticized for its handling of the OOXML process by the New Zealand Open Source Society,[45] the open source advisory firm Waugh Partners, Australian National University Professor Roger Clarke[citation needed], OASIS lawyer Andrew Updegrove[citation needed], IBM[citation needed] and Google[citation needed]. Standards Australia sent ISO SC 34 expert and XML and Schematron specialist Rick Jelliffe to the BRM, despite critics[46] alleging that Jelliffe would not represent the views of those opposing the standardization. Jelliffe had previously been in the news after being offered payment by Microsoft to improve incorrect Wikipedia articles about Office Open XML.[47] Microsoft had bought a schema conversion tool from his company and he had performed the initial conversion of the Office Open XML schemas from XML Schemas to RELAX NG[citation needed], both schema languages he had been involved in standardizing. It was alleged that Standards Australia had broken a previous public pledge to send two internal employees to the BRM.[48][49] However Standards Australia issued a press release denying this and stating that the Computerworld article was "was riddled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations.”[50]
Norway's vote was decided by Standard Norge; the mostly opposing viewpoints of the technical committee were ignored after members were unable to reach consensus. Membership in the technical committee had risen from 6–7 to 30 members; all of the pre-OOXML members argued in favour of a "no" vote.[51][52][53][54] In October 2008, 13 of the 23 members, 12 of which are associated with the open-source movement,[55] resigned[56] after OOXML was ratified by ISO and all appeals were rejected.
The IDABC community programme (which is managed by the European Commission) runs the "Open Source Observatory" which is "dedicated to Free/Libre/Open Source Software."[57] Via its "Open Source News", it has reported on reports which criticize the standardization process.
It states that the German IT news site Heise reports that in Germany, two opponents of Office Open XML,
Re:Just remember. (Score:1, Informative)
Google doesn't constantly prevail in patent claims. For example, they lost a Linux server kernel patent case last year and had to pay $5 million to Bedrock Computer Technologies.
Re:Can somebody lay out what it would mean..... (Score:5, Informative)
Do note that since this started, Florian has been portending doom and gloom for Google at each step, and now we're down to a single issue, a judge who isn't giving a kind ear to Oracle's demands, and a refused settlement offer from Google to Oracle.
When this was supposed to end Android and all of Google's mobile ambitions, at least according to Florian.
Re:Can somebody lay out what it would mean..... (Score:5, Informative)
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but I respectfully disagree. It has been my experience that Florian Mueller has an agenda and it is not for the betterment of FOSS. In the cases I have read on his blog, his analysis is wrong at least as much as it is right. That said, he is not a journalist, nor a lawyer, but a blogger and entitled to his opinion. Like any blog, I would recommend you read it with some skepticism.
Re:Oracle and Google should compensate the jury (Score:4, Informative)
Many people cannot afford jury duty. The $40 a day does not cut it for many people. Of course I would "weasel" out of jury duty if it put my finances or employment in danger, especially if it was a trial between Google and Oracle, both with more money than they can throw away wrestled in lengthy trials. Employers may be forced to give you time off for jury duty, but when shit is hitting the fan at work, and even when it's not, taking that time off does not look good for you and your prospects of keeping your job. You try telling your employer that you're sorry the company is in one of the biggest crunch time periods in its history and you're one of the pivotal cogs in the machine, but you're going to be gone for a few weeks and see how long you stay employed there. It doesn't even need to be that hectic to attract the ire of your boss.
Jury duty as it exists right now is a load of crap. Jurors should be properly reimbursed for their time if jury duty is compulsory.
Re:What are they fighting about? (Score:5, Informative)
For in-depth, of course, groklaw.net, but in short: Oracle (aka One Raving A*hole Named Larry Ellison) filed suit on the Googleplex for beeelyuns of dollars claiming Android and its Dalvik VM infringed various patents and copyrights in Java they own from the Sun acquisition.
Google countered that a) Sun never raised the issue back when Android first came out and Oracle shouldn't now be able to claim damages (legal term: laches) b) Dalvik was based on the Apache Harmony project, a "clean-room" implementation c) many/all of the patents now claimed by Oracle are dubious.
On review, many of the patents *have* been overturned on review, and at this point Oracle's claims are chiefly based on infringing about three dozen of the Java *APIs* as regards arrangement of arguments, etc. The potential damages have been substantially cut back as well, after the judge threw out two claim reports by Oracle, to around $44 million.
Oracle is being represented by Boies Schiller, the same wonderful firm that's [ still stuck ] representing SCO (excuse me, SCOXQ.PK, heh heh) in their futile anti-Linux efforts.