Oracle's Android Claims Cut By 98%

tomhudson writes "Groklaw is reporting that Oracle was ordered to reduce its claims against Google from 132 to 3. In a further ruling, the judge has ordered that 129 of those claims will be permanently barred against all past and current products. Additionally, the judge has asked both sides if, in their opinion, after they have reduced the number of claims, a trial is still worth holding, or if the case is now moot."

Comments

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[ArsenneLupin]

Each patent contains multiple claims (usually nested into each other like Russian dolls, from the broadest claims to the most specific). The broader variants have the advantage of striking more implementations (less easy to work around), but have the disadvantage of being more vulnerable to prior art (if they happen to cover a pre-existing implementation by somebody else). By listing multiple claims (from broadest to most specific), the patent holder gets advantages of both narrow and broad claims, without having to do any prior-art research himself.

So, "132 claims from seven patents" just means that Oracle claimed that Android was infringing on an average of 18 claims per patents (...which were very probably very similar to each other, differing only in scope...)

Google tried to have these claims struck by pointing out prior art (implementations that would infringe, but were actually done prior to the patent, thus showing that the patent (... or rather: the relevant claims...) was not really novel...), and found hundreds of them.

Then the judge told both parties to "keep it simple" by only sticking to the most relevant claims and defences.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[itsdapead]

Telling Google they have to pick and choose what they can use to defend themselves isn't kosher.

Google don't need to defend themselves against the claims that have been thrown out.

This isn't about deciding who is right, at this stage, its about cutting the case down to something that can be heard, considered properly and decided before the heat death of the universe.

Also, its not the Judge's job to get as many patent claims overturned as possible, much as we'd like that to happen.