Oracle and Google To Finally Enter Courtroom 175
Fluffeh writes "After around 900 motions and filings, not to mention a timeline of two years, Google and Oracle are finally putting their case before a jury which will be selected on Monday. While Oracle originally sued for billions, the possible damages have come down to a more reasonable $30-something million (the details vary depending on if you ask Google or Oracle). However, the sides are still far apart. Oracle's proposal was a minimum, not a maximum, and Oracle has asked for a tripling of damages because of the 'willful and deliberate nature of Google's infringement.' For ongoing royalties from future sales, Google has proposed payment of just over one-half of one percent of revenue if patent infringement is proven, but Oracle wants more. Beyond financial damages, Oracle has asked for a permanent order preventing Google from continuing to infringe the patents and copyrights. The case is planned to start on Monday afternoon, after jury selection or Tuesday at the latest."
One trashy company fighting another (Score:-1, Interesting)
One trashy company fighting another, only the lawyers are going to win here.
Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:4, Interesting)
In spite of the sunk cost of Davlik, I think at this point it would be better for Google to simply deprecate Java and tell developers that new development will happen in some other language (like Dart, python, whatever). They could continue to support the Java API indefinitely, but give new apps all the new features and optimisation. Android has had a lot of stick for being a slow, unpolished platform, and this is an opportunity to ditch some of that reputation, at the same time as ditching an unwilling partner (Oracle) who obviously doesn't appreciate what Google have done for Java with Android. The alternative doesn't bear thinking about - constant antagonism with the management of the language standard they are using. If Oracle loses this case they will not take it lying down - expect other moves against Google in the future, hell, even if they win I expect they'd come back for more at some later date. Oracle is obviously in a death spiral and determined to take the rest of the world with it - Apple has also ditched them recently, it seems because of friction with Oracle and new licensing terms, so it's not as if this is going to get better.
Java has caused Google serious issues with performance [android.com] on a mobile platform anyway - they'd be better off with a language and platform that they control entirely. Unfortunately changing the platform like this would be a huge wrench and would have to be managed very carefully over a period of years, but it can be done.
Re:How might Google try to get around the patents? (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess is that Oracle doesn't plan on winning the copyright issues at all. As has been pointed out in previous articles, if they win they will have, as a consequence, turned Java into a derivative work of the pre-existing languages it borrowed from. They will be sued for -- and lose -- much more than they could possibly hope to win here now. If they win on copyright, they lose big time.
Although they probably hope they can win on the patent issues, considering their damages have come down so much (from they probably thought were uninflated numbers) some of the execs and lawyers probably see that even if they win, they're not going to get what they want. Essentially, what started off as a hopeful money grab is now them most likely just going through the motions in order to save face. Though perhaps they are delusional enough to think otherwise.
As others have pointed out, if they actually do stop Davlik entirely, then their "win" is to have less people interested in Java. From what I hear about Java for the past couple of years, though, they seem to be willfully killing it off through mismanagement anyway. So perhaps they really don't give a shit about it at all. What kind of revenues they get due to Java?
Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:5, Interesting)
Because Google can't axe Java now, they in their infinite wisdom allowed it to proliferate. If only they have kept C and let developers to add Java, Python, Go, Haskell runtimes (all derived and compiled from C) they would have a great and truly free&open platform, the whole Java thing would get offloaded to third parties, something that smart companies do. Now Java is mandated, and of course you can't compile Go from Java nor Python from Java etc. as it all requires C to be the default underlaying SDK, which for some uniquely flawed executive reasoning is not. So Java is now the huge drag anchor of Android development, not only creating nightmares to developers, but also this patent/copyright Oracle stink.
Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:4, Interesting)
Android is here to stay and won't move away from Java and Oracle knows that very well
Yeah, it's not like Google has made their own language [golang.org] or uses popular, high level language [stackoverflow.com] internally that could replace java.
Since there's already C++ support for those needing the support, python could easily replace new development. Freeze the java API, only release the goodies in the new python API, and watch as java rides off into the sunset wrt new development.
Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:5, Interesting)
Infact, I think the only reason they bought sun was for the IP to bludgeon google over the head with. I'm not quite clear why though.
Walter Isaacson's bio of Steve Jobs sheds some light on it. Jobs and Larry Ellison were BFFs. Together, they had a long history of conspiring to advance each others' agendas.
Ellison, for instance, was prepared to launch a "hostile" takeover of Apple if they didn't bring Jobs back on board. Even after Jobs's death, rolling boulders downhill at Google just for the lulz would be precisely Ellison's style. He has nothing to lose and potentially a lot to gain.
Extortion =! Business (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, that's business....
I've been in the business field for decades, and I will tell you that 99.9% of business people on this earth do not include extortion as a part of normal business practice.
What Oracle is doing is extortion, pure and simple, and unfortunately, Google isn't their only target.
Hundreds of million Android users will also be affected
Re:Even if the companies aren't trashy ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Suppose a man locks a room full of strangers together for a full year. He waves a gun around and announces that he will be accepting any exclusive privilege to be allowed to speak and write a given word, where the privilege is given in a first come first serve basis. Any that violate this exclusivity will be shot in the head. Some of the strangers might be working closely with this man, or some may be just trying to get on his good side with gifts, but at the end of the day, he has the gun.
It would require extraordinary unity and trust to do anything other than try to grab up as many words as you can. Everyone would be eyeing each other like a mexican stand off, until one person went first to seek privilege from the man with the gun. At that moment, each person would have to rush to this man with the gun to get as much of the language as he can, else be doomed to silence.
This metaphor has to interesting points about companies involved in this patent system and other forms of IP laws. First, focus should be on the gunman; not the victims who play his game. To correct this problem, he must be addressed. Second, even decent people must play this game. They have no other choice if they wish to offer a product we want. Just one single bad guy requires everyone scramble to 'defend' themselves by means of the arbitrary rules of the game. If you do not, you will fade away. That would leave only the ones who eagerly participate, gladly using the rules and often bending them by becoming a favored sycophant and supplicant of the gunman.
Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:5, Interesting)
He has nothing to lose and potentially a lot to gain.
Nothing to lose... you mean other than having most of Oracle's Java patents invalidated and spending an obscene amount of legal fees against the prospect of not recovering anything?
Re:At least all of the jurors... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually DNA technology as currently used to investigate crimes is not accurate.
DNA fingerprinting as used is only based on a few genetic markers, not full DNA sequencing. Sometimes as few as 8 or 12 markers are used. This means each combination of markers is the same for thousands of people.
Typically, this is not a problem for the situation when DNA is obtained from a crime scene and in parallel obtained from a suspect and then compared (the likellyhood of a false positive is something like 1 in 8 million).
It is however a problem when DNA is obtained from the crime scene and then a database of DNA samples (which, remember, does not contain a full DNA code, just the values for the markers) is searched for matches - because if the database is big enough, matches will be found for certain (after all, thousands of people have that exact same set of markers) and of late the government has been growing those databases as fast as possible.
So yeah, DNA fingerprinting has to be looked at with some skepticism and it did made sense for the defense to struck you out.
Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:4, Interesting)
In my opinion, this is essentially illegal dumping
While the default is Google search, I know of at least two instances of carriers/handset makers changing it out. Samsung had a Verizon Android version of the Galaxy S with Bing search and Motorola had some Droid models with Yahoo search.
Windows resellers were forbidden from doing this.