Early reports say yes: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-now-better-than-siri-2012-7
Jury has partial verdict in favor of Oracle in case against Google
The Jury in the Oracle v Google case over Android has come to a partial verdict in favor of Oracle, but does not have a unanimous verdict for the other questions they were asked by the Judge to answer to arrive at their verdict.
To complicate the partial verdict, the verdict of the first question is only for 1 part of the question (“Has Oracle proven that Google has infringed the overall structure, sequence and organization of copyrighted works?”) and apparently the jury are not able to come to a decision on the second part (“Has Google proven that its use of Oracle’s Java documentation constituted “fair use”?”). Google’s attorneys are therefore asking for a mistrial stating that this question cannot be partially answered.
It’s obviously not clearcut at this point where this is heading, and I imagine this could still swing either way.
If the end result of this case is that it is ruled that an API is Copyrightable, it will be interesting to see what the repercussions of this will be for other follow-on lawsuits.
Oracle v Google court case started this week: in my own words, here’s a summary of the proceedings so far
If you haven’t been following, Oracle’s lawsuit against Google and their allegations that they ‘stole’ Java to develop Android is in court this week. Groklaw as usual are doing a stellar job to report on the proceedings (Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday), although nothing earth shattering has happened so far.
Here’s the summary, wording is entirely my own, somewhat loosely based on my understanding of the facts 🙂
Ellison: you stole Java Page: no we didn't Ellison: ok, then you didn't license it Page: we didn't license it because we couldn't come to an agreement on the terms with Sun, so we developed our own version based on Apache Harmony Judge: did Apache Harmony license Java? Page: no, because they didn't agree to Sun's licensing terms either, in particular the 'field of use' restrictions that limited what types of devices a particular version (SE vs ME) of the JVM can run on, that limits SE for example to only run on desktops and not on mobile devices Ellison: but the fact is, to develop your own version of Java, you should have licensed the TCK to verify that this was/is a valid version of Java Page: but it's not Java, its Dalvik. We've never said it is Java or is called Java Ellison: ok, then you should have licensed Java to build a new version of the language using the Java API spec Page: is there a license for the API spec? The Java language API is freely available without a license, is it not? Silence.
Ok. In a nutshell this is my understanding of where the discussions are so far. There seems to be a disagreement whether a license is required or even available to take the API spec for Java and develop your own version of the language. Based on the summaries from the Groklaw site, I get the impression Ellison’s team are accusing Page of things that they’re not sure of themselves – is a license available and/or required to use/read the Java language API spec? I’m not sure, but this is what seems to be the current discussion point.
Also if you build something that is functionally similar to Java, but you don’t call it Java and you don’t pretend to even call it Java, is it Java? If you haven’t blatantly copied copyright code, you rewrote the code again yourself in a cleanroom environment, then have you broken the law? Stay tuned as the court case continues in the coming days (weeks… months….)
Could Oracle end up losing money on their Java lawsuit against Google?
According to their original claims in 2010/2011, Oracle’s lawsuit against Google for Android violating Java related patents and copyright was worth somewhere between $1.6 billion and $6 billion in damages.
As the courts continued to throw out an increasing number of the claims, the estimated damages has come tumbling down. Right now, Oracle’s estimates are around $32 million. Google’s estimates are around $37 million.
At this rate, I wonder if it’s possible for Oracle to actually lose money on the case due to legal costs? $32 million is hardly big bucks for Google.
If Oracle had any sense, they should have licensed Android from Google as the replacement for Java ME, and not try to remove Android from the picture with legal action. Android is everything that Java ME should have been from the beginning but has always been so far from the mark.