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:nice

[WrongSizeGlass]

I think it may be Oracle that's left "twisting in the wind". Google is a huge target, but suing several dozen developers instead is probably not going to be nearly as easy or lucrative.

Does it have to be lucrative or just effective at preventing anyone from using it without a licensing fee?

Re:The summary is a bit short.

[h4rr4r]

"Oracle has come to the Court with unclean hands due to its practice of requiring licensees of its purportedly open software to pay for licenses to items not covered by Oracle's alleged intellectual property in order to receive a license under Oracle's alleged intellectual property."

A sentence only the deranged mind of a lawyer could love.

Re:nice

[h4rr4r]

Rent seeking the last refuge of the truly un-innovative.

PolicyNodeImpl.java is from the Android TEST tree

[rossjudson]

It's been widely reported that there's a duplicated file, and indeed it there is something close to that. BUT! One thing you'll find missing in Oracle's Exhibit "J" are the package headers at the top of the file. There's a good reason for that. On the Android side the file is in package org.apache.harmony.security.tests.support.cert, in directory support/src/test/java. You can see this in the git repository for android. It's sitting in a directory of test support classes.

So the matching file that we have here is part of the test suite to ensure compliance with the interfaces. It is NOT part of the implementation itself. So the real question is, is it OK to have this kind of file sitting in the test branch, to ensure that the real implementation of it complies?

The fact that the package headers have been removed and that this file is from the test suite can't be anything other than a deliberate attempt to deceive, well, someone. ;)

It's rather unbelievable that with thousands of stories out there on this file nobody is talking about WHERE it fits into the android tree.

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.

Re:But outside the US?

[TheLink]

Is it legal and viable for a lawyer to do stuff like:
"My client never laid eyes on the victim of this horrible crime; but even if he did, he was not at the scene of the murder at the time of the killing; but even if he was, he's not the shooter; but even if he was, he was insane; and if he wasn't, then it was clearly self-defense."