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Oracle Sues Google For Infringing Java Patents

Posted by timothy on from the here-we-go dept.

Bruce Perens writes "Oracle has brought a lawsuit against Google claiming that Google has infringed patents on the Java platform in Android. Scribd has a copy of the complaint. But there's a patent grant that should allow Google to use Java royalty-free. Has Google failed to meet the terms of the grant?"

5 of 510 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why do you think Oracle bought Sun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Google should have bought Sun. They had all kinds of interesting projects, people, patents and research happening. Plus they also would have had the SPARC platform (not big iron, but the CMT implementations) that, given enough investment, could have paid off in the long run for their commodity datacenters.

    For 7 billion, Sun was worth it. I wonder why they just let it pass.

  2. Sun is to blame by yyxx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It was Sun who never submitted Java to ISO or ANSI, it was Sun who created a dual-licensed Java, it was Sun who filed hundreds of patents on Java-related technologies, and it was Sun who created the limited patent grant under conditions that nobody could meet.

    And it was predictable that Sun would eventually fail and get bought by someone who might start to enforce those patents; in fact, the reason Oracle was willing to outbid everybody else was probably because they realized that these patents hadn't been placed fully into the public domain.

    I had been warning about this for years, but all the Java fanboys were arguing that Sun was the good guys, that they would never sue, and that Java was a free and open platform.

    Do your homework people: what has happened was predictable, and the evil seeds were sown by Sun itself.

  3. Serious questions raised by Oracle patent attack by FlorianMueller · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It will be hard to find out whether Oracle planned this kind of aggression when buying Sun, but it can certainly be stated that the free software/open source community hasn't benefited from the acquisition.

    There's a number of important questions that Oracle's patent attack raises:

    • Did Oracle try to resolve this amicably with Google (by way of a license deal) or is Oracle pursuing purely destructive objectives?
    • Will Google solve this patent problem in a way that the entire Android ecosystem (including the makers of Android-based phones and the authors of Android apps) will be reassured, or will Google only take care of its own risk?
    • Is Java less of an open standard now than C#? I don't really buy the argument that Oracle may only be suing because of deviations from the standards definition. This kind of patent attack is evil no matter whether Google adhere to certain specififcations or not.
    • Isn't this now the ultimate proof that the Open Invention Network doesn't really protect the Linux ecosystem from patent attacks? This is case of one OIN licensee (Oracle) suing another (Google).
    • Where are those FOSS advocates who said that Oracle's acquisition of Sun would be good for the cause and for the community? Some of them even claimed that it was important to have Oracle acquire Sun's patents. I've documented that on my blog.
    • Is it perhaps time to forget about the community's favorite bogeyman and recognize that IBM, Oracle and others are a much more serious threat to FOSS at this stage?
    • How can the so-called OpenForum Europe lobby the European Union for open source/open standards when its two most powerful members, IBM and Oracle, are patent aggressors against open source, especially in interoperability contexts?

    This is a patent dispute with very wide-ranging implications.

  4. Interesting JAVA RESEARCH LICENSE by robmv · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just for the record: What Sun said (now Oracle still says) about reading Oracle Java source code and creating a clean room implementation: JAVA RESEARCH LICENSE FAQ Question 18

    18. Does the JRL prevent me from being able to create an independent open source implementation of the licensed technology?

    The JRL is not a tainting license and includes an express "residual knowledge" clause which says you're not contaminated by things you happen to remember after examining the licensed technology. The JRL allows you to use the source code for the purpose of JRL-related activities but does not prohibit you from working on an independent implementation of the technology afterwards. Obviously, if your intention is to create an "independent" implementation of the technology then it is inappropriate to actively study JRL source while working on such an implementation. It is appropriate, however, to allow some decent interval of time (e.g. two weeks) to elapse between working on a project that involves looking at some JRL source code and working on a project that involves creating an independent implementation of the same technology

  5. Re:documenting it on http://en.swpat.org by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Miguel de Icaza gives a pretty good guess about what's happened.

    The gist is that Sun very carefully licensed Java under the GPL with an agreement that anyone who implements Java 100%, without supersetting, would get access to the patents. Apparently Sun's embedded implementations have some special functionality not included in the GPLed version. This is where the "very carefully" bit comes in -- it means others can't implement their own embedded versions (adding that special functionality would be supersetting), and would have to license Sun's version. Their embedded implementation generates the bulk of the cash for them, and they wanted to protect that.

    Google wanted to use Java but didn't want everyone to need to license the embedded version. So they implemented their own. To get around the supersetting issue, they changed their implementation (Dalvik) to not infringe on Sun's patents -- even going so far as to change the bytecode format and implementing a Java->Dalvik bytecode translator.

    Now Sun sees everyone hopping on the Android train for all sorts of devices, and no licensing fees coming in from any of them. And they're suing.

    It sounds plausible to me but Miguel is the author of Mono, so take this with a grain of salt. He's usually the one having an argument against someone saying how everyone should use Java because Microsoft will pull the same type of stunt against Mono some day, so this must be a humorous day for him.