Google Says 3rd Parties Would Be Liable For Java Infringement

angry tapir writes "Third parties, not Google, would be liable for any Java copyright violations in the Android mobile OS, according to a filing Google made in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Oracle sued Google in August over a number of alleged Java patent and copyright violations in Android."

Comments

Re:PolicyNodeImpl.java is from the Android TEST tr

[icebraining]

The headers haven't only be removed - which is a GPL violation by itself - there's a *new* header:

/*
  * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
  * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
  * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
  * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
  * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
  * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
  *
  * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
  *
  * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
  * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
  * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
  * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
  * limitations under the License.
  */

This is a blatant copyright violation, because you can't re-licence GPL code as Apache.

Re:But outside the US?

[russotto]

This filing doesn't mean that even Google think the defence will succeed.

It's my understanding that if you want to preserve your rights to assert a defense, you have to assert it up front. This prevents dramatic Perry Mason-style maneuvers where you pull a new defense out of the hat near the end of the trial.

But the predictable consequence of this rule is that lawyers will assert any and all possible defenses up front, so as to preserve their client's options.