Google did not breach Oracle patents, a court has found

[Matthew Farwell]

From  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18184079

> Google did not infringe patents owned by software developer Oracle, a jury in a California court found on Wednesday.

> The Silicon Valley giants had fought over whether Google used Oracle's Java programming language in its Android mobile operating system.

> Two weeks ago the same jury ruled that Google infringed Oracle's copyright, but could not agree whether Google's actions constituted "fair use".

> ...

> Without a finding against Google on the "fair use" issue, Oracle cannot recover the up to $1bn (£637m) in damages it was seeking.

> The jury concluded that Google infringed on 37 copyrighted APIs but it also agreed that Google demonstrated that it was led to believe it did not need a license for using Java.

This sounds like very good news.

Matthew Farwell.

[Ricky Clarkson]

It's great news, I hope Alsup's common sense becomes more common.

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[Cédric Beust ♔]

Indeed. This part should be cause for mild concern, though:

The jury concluded that Google infringed on 37 copyrighted APIs but it also agreed that Google demonstrated that it was led to believe it did not need a license for using Java.

There still hasn't been a ruling as a matter of law about the copyrightability of API's (in the US anyway), so that sword is still dangling over our heads.

-- 

Cédric

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Wed, 23 May 2012 22:53:14 +0200, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com>
wrote:

> Indeed. This part should be cause for mild concern, though:
>
> The jury concluded that Google infringed on 37 copyrighted APIs but it
> also
> agreed that Google demonstrated that it was led to believe it did not
> need
> a license for using Java.
>
>
> There still hasn't been a ruling as a matter of law about the
> copyrightability of API's (in the US anyway), so that sword is still
> dangling over our heads.

How longer will it take for have a final word?


--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
fabrizio...@tidalwave.it
http://tidalwave.it - http://fabriziogiudici.it

[mP]

> ...

> Without a finding against Google on the "fair use" issue, Oracle cannot recover the up to $1bn (£637m) in damages it was seeking.

> The jury concluded that Google infringed on 37 copyrighted APIs but it also agreed that Google demonstrated that it was led to believe it did not need a license for using Java.

I was not aware ignorance was a valid defence and excuse. Thats a great news for anyone wishing to experiment in criminal activities...

[Kevin Wright]

Not ignorance. Google showed evidence that it actually had Sun's *blessing* for its work on Android, everyone was excited about the potential for the Java ecosystem.  This is a far cry from Sun being silent on the matter and Google just pressing ahead without even looking at licensing requirements.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Thu, 24 May 2012 10:37:19 +0200, Kevin Wright
<kev.lee...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Not ignorance. Google showed evidence that it actually had Sun's
> *blessing*
> for its work on Android, everyone was excited about the potential for the
> Java ecosystem. This is a far cry from Sun being silent on the matter

Honestly, this is ridiculous. Android has been the JME killer, that is one
of the few direct areas of profits by Sun for Java. I can't understand how
one could really think that Sun was really blessing the operation. This
also contradicts the fact that there were negotiations between Sun and
Google (if Sun didn't want to sell a license and was pretty happy with
that, there were no need for negotiations). And doesn't explain why at a
certain point Google's management gave the instructions to search for
alternatives to Java. CEO's praise about Android was just the way in which
Sun was trying to put it in diplomacy, avoiding to add to the damage the
possible spread of FUD of Java being in decline. And the relationships
between the two companies behind the scenes were very bad in the last
years.

This not to say that I disagree with the decision of the court - it's
legal stuff I can't speak in this field. I just find illogical that the
decision has been made on that premise. The legal world is really a
parallel universe.

[Casper Bang]

I understand your JME argument, except that all witnesses carried by Sun told the court that this was not a concern. They were sad or annoyed that Google did not want to play by their rules (conform, negotiate and share control) but they understood that there were no way to pressure Google legally. Also, JME is not an operating system, so it's hardly a competitive product.

[Ricky Clarkson]

JME needed killing.  It didn't have a hope against iOS and was getting further behind JSE each year.  Competition is good.

Sun was deliberately vague on this and other matters.  I'm sure that working with Sun as it was ten years prior Google would have had its arm twisted to include Sun in the money chain or Google would have chosen a different language and the decision would have been quick.  Sun just moved like molasses in its last years.

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[Cédric Beust ♔]

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 1:59 AM, Fabrizio Giudici <Fabrizio...@tidalwave.it> wrote:

On Thu, 24 May 2012 10:37:19 +0200, Kevin Wright <kev.lee...@gmail.com> wrote:

Not ignorance. Google showed evidence that it actually had Sun's *blessing*
for its work on Android, everyone was excited about the potential for the
Java ecosystem.  This is a far cry from Sun being silent on the matter

Honestly, this is ridiculous. Android has been the JME killer, that is one of the few direct areas of profits by Sun for Java. I can't understand how one could really think that Sun was really blessing the operation.

Because Sun's CEO congratulated Google on his blog on the day of the Android announcement.

This was probably the most damaging part to Oracle's case. Well, that and the fact that when he testified, his testimony was seen more on Google's side than Oracle's.

-- 

Cédric

[Cédric Beust ♔]

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 1:59 AM, Fabrizio Giudici <Fabrizio...@tidalwave.it> wrote:

This not to say that I disagree with the decision of the court - it's legal stuff I can't speak in this field.

Actually, no, there was no legal decision. The jury simply found that Google didn't infringe, period.

-- 

Cédric

[Oscar Hsieh]

Agree, James Gosling talked about this in his blog

http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/my_attitude_on_oracle_v

"In Dan Farber's recent article on CNET titled "Oracle v. Google: Ex-Sun execs on opposite sides" he got my position on the case totally backwards and totally misinterpreted my comments. Just because Sun didn't have patent suits in our genetic code doesn't mean we didn't feel wronged. While I have differences with Oracle, in this case they are in the right. Google totally slimed Sun. We were all really disturbed, even Jonathan: he just decided to put on a happy face and tried to turn lemons into lemonade, which annoyed a lot of folks at Sun. "

It is no surprise that people in Sun don't like about this at all. People in Google probably dont like Amazon fork android neither.

[Cédric Beust ♔]

It's perfectly understandable to "feel wronged", but as the trial showed, this feeling was baseless. We still don't know if API's can be copyrighted, but it's now a fact according to the US legal courts that Google did nothing wrong.

-- 

Cédric

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Thu, 24 May 2012 18:29:31 +0200, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com>
wrote:

So are you saying it's 12 persons with no specific competence that
decided? :-)

[Casper Bang]

So are you saying it's 12 persons with no specific competence that  
decided? :-)

That would be, only 10 persons. They lost two jury members during the trial due to illness etc.

[Cédric Beust ♔]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Fabrizio Giudici <Fabrizio...@tidalwave.it> wrote:

So are you saying it's 12 persons with no specific competence that decided? :-)

For what it's worth, I think there is value in that, if only because every single software engineer would have come to this jury with a lot of of prejudices, at least about software patents and copyrights (I'm probably one of the very rare software engineers who sees value in them) and probably having feelings for or against one of the two companies involved in this trial (Google and Oracle).

And again, keep in mind that the jury did not have to decide on matters of law nor technology, all that it was asked is "Did company X do Y?".

-- 

Cédric

[Ricky Clarkson]

I'm sure most software engineers don't know enough to have an opinion on those things, if you draw them at random.  Not that having an opinion is necessarily a bad thing.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Wed, 30 May 2012 17:07:46 +0200, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com>
wrote:

> And again, keep in mind that the jury did not have to decide on matters
> of
> law nor technology, all that it was asked is "Did company X do Y?".

Where Y is defined in *legal* terms.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Wed, 30 May 2012 17:50:40 +0200, Ricky Clarkson
<ricky.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm sure most software engineers don't know enough to have an opinion on
> those things, if you draw them at random. Not that having an opinion is
> necessarily a bad thing.

This is true, as Cédric is right in saying that engineers could have a
pre-judice. The problem is that the law is getting too complex. Once a
definition of things is too complex, interpretation is arbitrary, as it
largely depends on the choice of interpreters.

[Kevin Wright]

Lack of prejudice is one thing, but lack of technical competence is a genuine risk in cases like these.

Without that competence, a lawyer can all too easily have a jury basing decisions on facts that are blindingly obvious.  Fortunately, the Judge in this case seemed to be sufficiently clued up:

"I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I’ve written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times before. I could do it; you could do it. The idea that someone would copy that when they could do it themselves just as fast, it was an accident. There's no way you could say that was speeding them along to the marketplace. You're one of the best lawyers in America, how could you even make that kind of argument?"

[opinali]

On Thursday, May 24, 2012 4:59:48 AM UTC-4, fabrizio.giudici wrote:

On Thu, 24 May 2012 10:37:19 +0200, Kevin Wright  
<kev.lee...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Not ignorance. Google showed evidence that it actually had Sun's  
> *blessing*
> for its work on Android, everyone was excited about the potential for the
> Java ecosystem.  This is a far cry from Sun being silent on the matter

Honestly, this is ridiculous. Android has been the JME killer, that is one  

JavaME had many killers, Android was a late contender for that and certainly not a critical one. JavaME was first stabbed by iOS, then by Sun's own big-time failure with the first-generation JavaFX plan--the original thing that would be a complete mobile platform, not just an UI framework. [BTW, I still root for JavaFX 2+... but it's not anymore a mobile platform.] Android was perhaps the coup de grâce. Without Android, the most likely scenario today would be iOS being much more dominant, and maybe Windows Phone having some decent market share too.  I think Android was much worse to WP, as both compete in the entry-level smartphone market, while Apple is happy to target the high-end market exclusively.

 

of the few direct areas of profits by Sun for Java. I can't understand how  
one could really think that Sun was really blessing the operation. This  

Sun was interested in blessing the operation, IF Sun (in addition to a fat $100M licensing fee that Google agreed to pay) could retain control over it, like we know know due to the trial's proceedings. Google couldn't make that deal for obvious reasons; although we don't know the details, I'm sure Sun's proposal was something like:

- Android having TCK terms with restrictions similar to the JDK;

- Android being required to keep 100% compatibility with either JavaME or JavaSE;

- Android's specs developed by the JCP, with Sun having at least veto power;

- Sun dictating Android's choice of open source license, very likely GPL; Sun certainly wouldn't allow Google to re-license JDK sources under ASL2.

Just the JCP and backwards-compat items would be sufficient to cause Android to fail, in a fierce competition with the fast and strong innovator that is Apple.

 

also contradicts the fact that there were negotiations between Sun and  
Google (if Sun didn't want to sell a license and was pretty happy with  
that, there were no need for negotiations). And doesn't explain why at a  

This round of negotiations happened because Google's initial plan was licensing the whole thing, including source code, to at least jump-start the new platform. This failed, so Google went to "plan B" which is a completely separate thing, involving significant new development. This new plan was slower, riskier and more expensive, but in the end it was a good thing because Google was free of TCK compatibility so there was more freedom to address technical problems in the VM and core APIs, keeping only a sweet-spot of compatibility to make easy porting Java code, tools, and trained developers.

BTW, I used to think that Google was naive and not enough thorough in its work to avoid Sun's IP; but as we can see now in the trial, Google actually did a pretty good job of clean-room implementation. If you take a hard look at the two patents that survived to the jury, it's obvious that Android doesn't infringe any.

 

certain point Google's management gave the instructions to search for  
alternatives to Java. CEO's praise about Android was just the way in which  
Sun was trying to put it in diplomacy, avoiding to add to the damage the  

This CEO's praise was published in a corporate blog (the blog was mentioned in SEC-10K filings so there's no debate about its corporate status).  We can agree with the analysis that Jonathan was just trying to put a happy face on it, but that doesn't matter, his statements had legal relevance.

A+

Osvaldo [disclaimer: Googler, but just my personal opinion here]