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

Can someone explain in English?

[kvvbassboy]

From TFA: "Currently, there are 132 claims from seven patents asserted in this action, and there are hundreds of prior art references in play for invalidity defenses." What does this mean?

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which bit don't you get? Oracle made 132 claims of infringement by Google on their patents. Those 132 claims involved only 7 patents (ie. many of the claims involved the same patents). Google responded by claiming the patents were invalid, citing hundreds of examples of prior art that meant the patents should not have been granted in the first place.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it means that there are 132 separate claims that parts of the code used by google are patented under one (or more) of the seven patents.

If only one claim per patent was upheld, then google would still have to pay to use all 7 patents. But now its been changed such that only 3 claims are to be investigated, and only 8 claims of prior art are to be used in googles defense.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:
"Currently, there are 132 claims from seven patents asserted in this action, and there are hundreds of prior art references in play for invalidity defenses."

What does this mean?

It means that most of the claims are being defended using "prior art." An example of prior art would be like trying to file a patent for the bicycle (assuming one does not currently exist), it is obvious that the bicycle was not your idea, as someone invented, and put it into practice, long before your filing. The bicycles that were manufactured before you filed would be considered prior art.

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?

[shentino]

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

If I were Google I'd appeal this pronto.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[Anonymous Coward]

That russian doll is called 'matrushka'.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[azalin]

Basically they were told to sum up the most important points.
Example (nothing to do with TFA or the case):
Party 1 has a patent on mousebuttonhighlighting (pretty lame, but caffeine level is currently to low) and sues Party 2 for using said technique, stating each and every page ever produced by 2 as evidence
Party 2 then states that Party 1 should never had gotten the patent in the first place, filing each and every web page using said technique before patent was granted (prior art) as evidence
Judge says: OK kids, you both get to choose your most important points and the rest of that crap goes into the waste bin (no recycling allowed). If, after you are forced to think about the stuff you unloaded on my table, you still think it is worth talking about, we can go to court.
Did I forget anything important?

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.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[EdgeCreeper]

Matroyshka

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[ArsenneLupin]

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

The judge not only threw out claims, but also some of Google's prior art examples.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[AJH16]

Right, if I have someone accusing me of A, B, C and D and I have defenses for A, B and C. Then if A, B and C are thrown out, my defenses can be too because they are no longer relevant to the case because I no longer need to defend myself. At least that is my understanding, the judge is just shrinking the body of what needs to be reviewed because he found that a number of claims had no merit and that removing those claims made some of the prior art examples unnecessary.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[carlzetie]

You forgot to say: The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[ArsenneLupin]

Then if A, B and C are thrown out, my defenses can be too because they are no longer relevant to the case because I no longer need to defend myself.

That's assuming that the judge throws out your defenses for A, B and C, and none for D. For a simple case, he would probably get it right, but just imagine the following situation:

Oracle accuses Google of A, B and C.
Google has defense X against A, Y against A, Z against B and C, and T against C.

Judge throws out A, B, X, Y and Z, leaving Oracle only with C, and Google only with T.

Google has still defence T, but Z, which could also have been used against C as well is gone. So Google now has a weaker case.

Given that we are talking about multiple claims of the same patent, the situation where one item of prior art could be used to defend against multiple claims is rather likely.

the judge is just shrinking the body of what needs to be reviewed because he found that a number of claims had no merit and that removing those claims made some of the prior art examples unnecessary.

If that is all he did, you would have a point. But it is just as well possible that Google too brought excessive amounts of prior art per claim, some of which the judge might have wrongly considered irrelevant (even against the claims that were still remaining)

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[shentino]

Who is to say whether or not Google can fit valid defenses into the 8 prior art slots they've been hogtied into limiting themselves to?

If Google needs 9 to prove a defense, they're screwed.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[Sky Cry]

Check your own link, it's Matryoshka, not "Matrushka". :)

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[mrchaotica]

It's a word normally written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Do you really think it has a canonical representation in the Latin alphabet?

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[klui]

Now I learned about why MKV files were named the way it was.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[0100010001010011]

Google has defense X against A, Y against A, Z against B and C, and T against C.

Judge throws out A, B, X, Y and Z, leaving Oracle only with C, and Google only with T.

I was told there would be no math.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[snaFu07]

Of course it has.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[WhiteDragon]

Check your own link, it's Matryoshka, not "Matrushka". :)

Funny, that link seemed to indicate it was , but yeah. :-)

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[WhiteDragon]

d'oh, I hit preview, and I wanted to cancel editing, but accidentally hit it twice. Ok, so apparently slashcode can't handle international characters. The wikipedia article listed both romanizations though.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[anyGould]

Here's my understanding of the progression:

• Oracle spams out 132 accusations where they say Google infringed on their seven patents.
• Since one "hit" is a win for Oracle, Google must defend against all 132 accusations. (read: even if they're not infringing in 131 cases, if they're infringing on point #132, it's infringement).
• Thus, Google is forced to spam hundreds of counterarguments.
• The judge, correctly deducing that he would finish his career on this case if he has to preside over this mess, and also correctly deducing that Oracle is spamming, tells Oracle that they have to pick their three best claims. And to stop a repeat performance, he rules that the other 129 are auto-losses.
• Google, once they are told what the three *actual* infringing claims are, gets to choose the eight prior arts that best defend against those three. (It's a bit odd that the number isn't nine - three for each claim - but that's neither here nor there). In balance of Oracle's auto-losses, Google is told that they can't use any other defenses past this point as well.
• The logic is sound to my eyes - if Oracle can't win on their three best cases, odds are that they can't win on the other hundred-plus.

Near as I can see, this is a big win for Google - they've essentially won on 129 points by default, and can concentrate their resources on the remaining three.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[sznupi]

The same link mentions matrioshka (brain); also points to... Just for a start (and version of parent poster could easily result from just being a native speaker of some Slavic language or even local dialect of Russian, influencing his chosen form of romanization)

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[suutar]

Actually, the judge isn't throwing out anything. He's telling Oracle "You will throw out most of these. Pick three you like." And he's telling Google "Most of this is going away. Pick 8 that you like once you know the three Oracle is going to be using." Oracle will of course pick the three that they think are the strongest, but Google can pick their 8 strongest defenses against those three.

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[Sique]

Both are actually correct. The slawish languages are very inventive when it comes to diminuitives. Matj means mother, matka is the first diminuitive, and you can add as much syllables as you want to create further diminuitives: matryoshka, matrushenka, matryoshenshitchka...

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[shutdown -p now]

It has several representations which could be considered correct, but none of them involve "u".

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[shutdown -p now]

It would still be be "matryoshenka", not "matrushenka". And the second one would be "matryoshenechka".

Yes, in theory you could pile them on indefinitely, but in practice anything beyond the first degree is really only useful for purposeful exaggeration (i.e. when you're trying to draw attention to the use of diminutive).

Also, in Russian, "matka" is not a diminutive of "mat'" (mother), albeit it is in some other Slavic languages. In Russian, it is a distinct word - with the same root - which means "uterus".

Re:Can someone explain in English?

[EdgeCreeper]

I only replied because I thought the link might be a little amusing. It was not intended as a spelling correction, even though now I can see it being interpreted as that.

a judge with common sense

[kubitus]

please promote this judge to advise higher up!

Re:a judge with common sense

[Runaway1956]

Agreed. Sometimes, it seems that the judge in this case or that is a tired old fart without a clue about technology. All the smartass young lawyers come in, talk over the judge's head, and argue asinine bullshit that the judge might only understand if an impartial third party spent months explaining to him. It's about time some judges cut through all the bullshit, and put the lawyers in their place.

"Stop squabbling, children, I WILL DECIDE what is important, and what is not. Sit down, shut up, and OBEY ME!!!"

That said, we need several judges to get a clue about software patents, and to rule the whole damned system as null and void, ruling that software is not and never should have been patentable.

That would still leave a lot of potential for exploitation in copyright laws, but at least the trolls would lose one of their favorite tools.

Re:a judge with common sense

[Eggplant62]

If only this judge had been in charge of the cases in SCO vs The World, that nonsense would have been done in 2004. It's easy to see that this fellow has a clue here.

Re:a judge with common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stop squabbling, children, I WILL DECIDE what is important, and what is not. Sit down, shut up, and OBEY ME!!!"

Close, but no cigar. You could have RTFA, but let me save you the trouble:

"The first reduction will follow claim construction. Within SEVEN DAYS after the finalized claim construction order issues, Oracle shall narrow its patent infringement case to 40 asserted claims. Within SEVEN DAYS after that, Google shall narrow its invalidity case to 120 prior art references."

"The second reduction will follow expert disclosures. By AUGUST 24 (five days after reply expert reports must be served), Oracle shall narrow its patent infringement case to 20 asserted claims. By AUGUST 29 (five days later), Google shall narrow its invalidity case to 60 prior art references."

"The third reduction will follow summary judgment. Between the date on which the summary-judgment order issues and the final pretrial conference, Oracle shall select no more than three asserted claims and Google shall select no more than eight prior art references for trial. All others will be forsaken."

I like this addition though: "Counsel did not specify their understanding of a “triable number” of claims and prior art references, so the Court selected these figures based on its own views and experience". In other words: you failed to tell me what you think is reasonable, so I will decide what is reasonable. And three claims seems reasonable to me. Now stop squabbling and come back when you have decided what you want.

This judge is looking for a speedy resolution. He probably knows the SCO case, and seems hell-bent on not allowing this case to be drawn out for years.

Re:a judge with common sense

[mjwx]

Agreed. Sometimes, it seems that the judge in this case or that is a tired old fart without a clue about technology. All the smartass young lawyers come in, talk over the judge's head, and argue asinine bullshit that the judge might only understand if an impartial third party spent months explaining to him. It's about time some judges cut through all the bullshit, and put the lawyers in their place.

"Stop squabbling, children, I WILL DECIDE what is important, and what is not. Sit down, shut up, and OBEY ME!!!"

It needs to go further then that. A judge needs to be able to rule that a litigant is vexatious and say:

"This was an utter waste of the courts time again, you are barred from suing for the next 5 (or so) years, now get out of my court."

Re:a judge with common sense

[chemicaldave]

Hold your horses. He's not reducing the number of claims because he thinks the claims themselves are ridiculous. He's reducing the number of claims because the number is ridiculous and not able to be tried reasonably.

Currently, there are 132 claims from seven patents asserted in this action, and there are hundreds of prior art references in play for invalidity defenses. This is too much. The following schedule will ensure that only a triable number of these items — three claims and eight prior art references — are placed before the jury in October, all others to be forsaken.

Do you have any idea how long a trial would last with 132 claims and hundreds of prior art references to sort out?

Re:a judge with common sense

[Runaway1956]

Yes, I actually DID RTFA. Perhaps the fact that I was translating from legal speak into something that makes sense to me went right over your head.

"so the Court selected these figures based on its own views and experience"

That single line pretty much says, "We're going to do this MY way, little bitches, now shut up, and sit down, pay attention!"

Re:a judge with common sense

[swillden]

Hold your horses. He's not reducing the number of claims because he thinks the claims themselves are ridiculous. He's reducing the number of claims because the number is ridiculous and not able to be tried reasonably.

Yeah, on the one hand it's kind of arbitrary and capricious. I mean, if they really have 132 valid claims it seems inappropriate for the court system to refuse to allow them to be asserted. On the other hand trying all of those claims and all of the prior art would just be impractical.

On the gripping hand, I suspect that the real root of the problem is that most of these patents should never have been issued in the first place, because they are invalid due to prior art, and/or obviousness. But our broken patent system leaves that for the courts to sort out in what's arguably the most expensive and least efficient way possible.

Re:a judge with common sense

[DCFusor]

We could hope this judge caught that clue by watching SCO antics, maybe even reading Groklaw. Hope, anyway. PJ sure did a job of work to raise awareness to the point where that's a possibility.

Re:a judge with common sense

[urulokion]

It needs to go further then that. A judge needs to be able to rule that a litigant is vexatious and say: "This was an utter waste of the courts time again, you are barred from suing for the next 5 (or so) years, now get out of my court."

Being declared a vexatious litigator has an extremely hurdle to overcome. And that hurdle being the constitutional right of access to the courts. One frivolous lawsuit would not be nearly enough to be declared vexatious. It would take dozens of such cases.

Re:a judge with common sense

[dlingman]

It's also important to read that is happening before each reduction. The first is the biggest. "The first reduction will follow claim construction". This means all 129 claims go to the Markman hearing, where the actual meaning of the claims is nailed down. quite often after that step, it's obvious that some of the claims are crap anyways, and others are more likely to win. it's actually not that unheard of for things to just stop at that point, and head to a negotiation phase because infringement is obvious, or to dismiss things, cause it's obvious that there is no infringement.

Re:a judge with common sense

[dlingman]

Mod Judge up.

Re:a judge with common sense

[arivanov]

He will do a summary judgement at 20. So the reduction to 3 is actually only if the trial goes in front of a jury.

Most patent trials do not. If the summary judgement does not go the way the defendant wants it the defendant usually caves in and licenses at that point instead of being nuked by jury assigned damages.

In any case, that is only patents. Oracle has launched a salvo of license and copyright missiles as well.

Re:a judge with common sense

[scragz]

Everyone says how the patent system is broken so they leave it to the courts to figure out. Now it would be great if the courts are also saying there are too many patents for them to deal with. Progress!

Re:a judge with common sense

[Thing 1]

On the gripping hand, [...]

Oh how I cringe when I see that; the book overused the term. By the third time they used it, that is, and then it was all I could do to not set the book on fire, or some better ending than that.

Re:a judge with common sense

[AK Marc]

132 in one case is unreasonable.

They had 7 patents and on average 19 claims each. If they had filed one case for each 7 patents and 19 claims per case and 7 simultaneous cases, then they wouldn't have been trimmed as they were.

It's like an Icarus thing. They reached too high and got smacked down for it.

Re:a judge with common sense

[mjwx]

It needs to go further then that. A judge needs to be able to rule that a litigant is vexatious and say: "This was an utter waste of the courts time again, you are barred from suing for the next 5 (or so) years, now get out of my court."

Being declared a vexatious litigator has an extremely hurdle to overcome. And that hurdle being the constitutional right of access to the courts. One frivolous lawsuit would not be nearly enough to be declared vexatious. It would take dozens of such cases.

Which is exactly what I mean, not just in number of cases but severity. I live in Australia where you can be declared a vexatious litigant and it takes a lot to get to that point, as it should be. Only three people have been declared vexatious litigants by Australia's high courts, two of them for repeated cases against the commonwealth (the state of Australia) claiming they commonwealth did not have the right to issue banknotes. Obviously, a limit on court access should be a very serious matter, even here a vexatious litigant is not denied complete access to the court as is the case with David James Lindsey.

But judges should have that power (with the right to appeal before a panel of higher judges or some other means of recourse in case the ruling is unfair). The legal system needs a bit of housecleaning or at least the capability, just the idea of being declared a vexatious litigant will scare some patent trolls.

Re:a judge with common sense

[swillden]

I quite like it. Not only does it nicely label a third possibility, it also implies that it's a more compelling option than the other two.

More extreme than Google's counterproposal?

[mcvos]

Only 3 Oracle claims left? Only a few days ago I heard about Oracles proposal to reduce the number of claims to 30, and Google's counter proposal to reduce them to 20. 3 seems rather extreme, doesn't it?

I just hope it helps rather than hurts Google's attempt to invalidate all those patents.

Re:More extreme than Google's counterproposal?

[Fri13]

Even 1 could be enough for ruling to stop competitive company products being sold.

If companies would be smart and really being sure that other company is abusing their patent, then they would show just the ones what are needed.
Now they throw almost everything what they get even close to that case and judges and assistant specialists are bored to death. Companies believe that the amount of abusive accusitions means the judge (or jury) sees how bad the accused is and it can not be a false.
 

Re:More extreme than Google's counterproposal?

[somersault]

It's going to get to 3 eventually, but they are going to cut the claims down gradually. I read TFA but I'll shamelessly post this excerpt from AC's above post:

"The first reduction will follow claim construction. Within SEVEN DAYS after the finalized claim construction order issues, Oracle shall narrow its patent infringement case to 40 asserted claims. Within SEVEN DAYS after that, Google shall narrow its invalidity case to 120 prior art references."

"The second reduction will follow expert disclosures. By AUGUST 24 (five days after reply expert reports must be served), Oracle shall narrow its patent infringement case to 20 asserted claims. By AUGUST 29 (five days later), Google shall narrow its invalidity case to 60 prior art references."

"The third reduction will follow summary judgment. Between the date on which the summary-judgment order issues and the final pretrial conference, Oracle shall select no more than three asserted claims and Google shall select no more than eight prior art references for trial. All others will be forsaken."

Re:More extreme than Google's counterproposal?

[VortexCortex]

Even 1 could be enough for ruling to stop competitive company products being sold.

If companies would be smart and really being sure that other company is abusing their patent, then they would show just the ones what are needed. Now they throw almost everything what they get even close to that case and judges and assistant specialists are bored to death. Companies believe that the amount of abusive [accusations] means the judge (or jury) sees how bad the accused is and it can not be a false.

What competing smart-phone does Oracle sell? Does Google sell Android? nope... How would Oracle make sure that Google is "abusing" their Java patents? Are not both Java and Davlik both free as in beer? Patents stifle innovation, and harm business, even open source software can't escape the gaping maw of the patent trolls... It's as plain as day to anyone who can whip out "hello world". IMO, the judge shouldn't stop there, continue reducing the triable software patents until the most reasonable number of applicable software patents is reached...

Honestly, I write software, and I do have competitors, but I welcome their competition -- I would never dream of suing them with every patent I have... although, it would be sort of interesting in court:

"You see! They're infringing EVERY PATENT I HAVE!"
"Just how many is that?"
"Well... Zero, but by my calculations that means the monetary damages should be INFINITE!"

It is possible to not patent anything, and still sell software and services. My customers fund the development of new features, instead of me constantly re-licensing old code -- I get paid to do work, not produce encryption keys -- It costs less to produce and purchase the software and, IMO, it's much more fair.

I need less middle men, therefore I can take a larger percentage of the profit even if the total is less & I like it this way.

Re:More extreme than Google's counterproposal?

[urulokion]

Even 1 could be enough for ruling to stop competitive company products being sold.

Not really. There has been a court case (too lazy to look it up) which has greatly gutted the threat having products recalled, seized, etc. and/or huge amounts of damages if the product has violated a patent. It boils down to how much of the patent the products has violated and how essential the violated invention is to the entirety of the product. If, for example, a smartphone violated 1 claim in a patent on how menus are displayed/formatted that is a very small part of the overall product so the court would over all of the phones to be seize or rewards a bazillion $$$. More likely the penalty would be a small amount of $$ for each manufactured smartphone

On the other hand, it would be enough for the FTC to block the importation of that smartphone into the US before the dispute has been heard and tried by a court.

Re:More extreme than Google's counterproposal?

[alvinrod]

It's legal maneuvering. If you just throw three at them to start with, even if they are actually infringing, their lawyers can make a better defense against those three. It's better to throw some that are more ambiguous in there as well. It might just happen that the opposition spends most of their time building defenses for the ones you didn't care all that much about anyway and be caught of guard for your most solid patents. Most likely this will never actually see a jury verdict as eventually the outcome will be clear to lawyers on both sides long before the trial would reach a natural end. At that point both sides decide to settle as the outcome is obvious and there's no point in running up more legal fees.

The end is obviosly near

[azalin]

A court order making sense? ObL found, nuclear reactors are now officially not 100% safe, the greens party wins an election in germany, the second british prince marries a common woman, canada has a new government, atlas shrugged the movie is out, the middle east struggling for freedom...
2012 must truly bring the end of the world as we know it.

Re:The end is obviosly near

[hcpxvi]

Nonono --- the end will be near when Slashdot's fortune generator gets un-stuck and shows something other than that annoying Matt Welsh quote. (And when I get some mod points.)

Re:The end is obviosly near

[Fri13]

What?! You say Slashdot is going to be run down 2012? Hell....

Re:The end is obviosly near

[sosume]

I thought it was just me stuck with that quote ..

Re:The end is obviosly near

[Pieroxy]

You forgot that Duke Nukem is coming out this year in June.

In this regard, this year is no different from the 10 previous ones.

Re:The end is obviosly near

[LynnwoodRooster]

You must be new around here (regardless of your 5 digit UID)... Every /.er knows the world doesn't end until Duke Nukem Forever is released...

Re:The end is obviosly near

[Hognoxious]

... and ported to the Hurd. I mean GNU/Hurd, sorry. Please don't put me back in the box, Mr Stallman.

Re:The end is obviosly near

[White Flame]

The year of Linux on the desktop must first come to pass.

Re:The end is obviosly near

[TheRaven64]

I assumed that was deliberate. The comment seems to sum up Slashdot 2.0 quite well...

Re:The end is obviosly near

[somersault]

The release date was always just "when it's done" before.

Re:The end is obviosly near

[the eric conspiracy]

Atlas Shrugged is only part 1 and it's pretty crappy, so much so it's unlikely part 2 will be made.

So we are safe for a while.

Re:The end is obviosly near

[Rary]

Annoying? Given the atrocity that is the new comment system, that quote is just about the only reason I keep coming back.

Re:The end is obviosly near

[MonsterTrimble]

If there ever was a post that needed to go above +5, that is it.

Re:The end is obviosly near

[tepples]

As tablets and netbooks converge (e.g. ASUS Eee Pad Transformer), Linux on the desktop seems like more of a possibility.

Re:The end is obviosly near

[SheeEttin]

Well, it was "fixed" a few minutes ago. So that it displayed a whole bunch of fortunes instead of just one, though. (It seems to be really fixed now. It's just showing one fortune.)

Re:The end is obviosly near

[roc97007]

Unless it's actually released, at which time the world really comes to an end.

collusion

[JustOK]

i call collusion. lawyers on both sides just wanted to get the judge to say "moot" cause it sounds funny. "Moot." hehehe. Try it. "Moot".

Re:collusion

[clang_jangle]

[blah blah blah]....moot. What's so funny, counselor?"

<butthead> huhuhuhuh you said huhuh "moot". Huhuh huhuhuh</butthead>

<beavis> Yeah! Yeah! He said "moot" heh hehheh hehhehhehhehheh</beavis>

<judge> **bangs gavel**</judge>

Oracle only needs one

[91degrees]

It's a scattergun approach. Honestly, seems pretty poor form from Oracle's legal team but their job is to win, not to play fair.

The tactic seems to be to file every claim that could conceivably be relevant. Hope a few will stick. As it happens 3 did. That's 200% more than they needed.

Re:Oracle only needs one

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not that 3 stuck: the judge has not decided which 3 claims stick. He has ordered both sides to reduce their claims and defences from the current huge number in three stages, to be down to 3/8 by the time the case comes to trial. The idea is that Oracle should pick their three strongest claims, and Google their eight best defences against those claims. This means that there is at least a chance that the jury will be able ti understand the case without their brains exploding,

Re:Oracle only needs one

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I offered to license my patented technique of "Apparatus and method for the preparation of a shit-adhesive wall"; but we couldn't come to an agreement. I bet they are sorry now...

Groklaw is stopping.

[leuk_he]

It was announced that groklaw will stop on may 16, What site will be the best followup?

Re:Groklaw is stopping.

[urulokion]

Groklaw isn't going away. All that's happening is that PJ (Pamela Jones) is retiring aka stepping away from Groklaw to pursuit other things. Groklaw has consumed her life for the past 9 years.

I don't know what Groklaw will morph into w/o PJ at the helm. But PJ (aka the team of IBM laywers ;) ) says the site will be in good hands after she steps down.

Re:not cool

[TheRaven64]

Way off-topic here, but 'communism has never been practiced' is another way of saying that it doesn't work, since it has been attempted a lot of times. And it's not even true. Communism works quite well, the problem is that it doesn't scale. Once you get beyond about 50 people in your society, communism starts to develop serious issues.

Am I reading this right?

[ajo_arctus]

I'm not sure I'm reading this right, but to me it looks like Oracle now get to build back up to 40 claims (based on the 7 patents), after which Google can have up to 120 invalidity cases (prior art), from where Oracle have to halve the number of claims and Google finally have to halve the number of invalidity cases. Then they go to summary judgement.

This is the bit I'm reading:

The first reduction will follow claim construction. Within SEVEN DAYS after the finalized claim construction order issues, Oracle shall narrow its patent infringement case to 40 asserted claims. Within SEVEN DAYS after that, Google shall narrow its invalidity case to 120 prior art references. It is anticipated that this first pair of reductions will be completed by the end of May. Within SEVEN DAYS after that, Google shall narrow its invalidity case to 120 prior art references. It is anticipated that this first pair of reductions will be completed by the end of May. The second reduction will follow expert disclosures. By AUGUST 24 (five days after reply expert reports must be served), Oracle shall narrow its patent infringement case to 20 asserted claims. By AUGUST 29 (five days later), Google shall narrow its invalidity case to 60 prior art references. The parties will then have a week of expert discovery remaining, and another week before summary-judgment motions must be filed.

I'm not sure if this is a major win for either side or not, or whether the judge is just telling them to calm down and come back with a reasonable number of things to take to trial. PJ certainly seems happy, so I'm guessing that this hurts Oracle far more than Google.

Ummm, sorry, that is one of their jobs

[Sycraft-fu]

Judges in US courts are the judge of law. It is their job to decide how the law applies to a case and make sure legal standards of evidence are met. So that also means they can dismiss things and prevent them from coming back. This same thing can happen in a criminal case. A judge can determine that the evidence is insufficient to go to trial, and that something has tainted it and thus bar the charge from going forward.

Judges are supposed to get rid of things before it goes to the jury. The jury is just the judge of fact. Everything presented to them is supposed to have met all legal standards, they are just there to decide what is true or not.

In the case of civil trials, a lot of things often get thrown out since plaintiffs often make shitloads of claims. In a criminal trial the prosecution must have one theory of the case. That theory could potentially change based on new evidence, but they can't present a bunch of alternate scenarios and try to play pick n' choose. However in a civil trial the plaintiff may present a whole bunch of claims, and likewise the defense may present a whole bunch of defenses.

Some of these can be pretty stupid, and they'll get culled pretrial.

This appears to be the legal system working as intended. If you don't like it, you are probably going to have to look for another country as it is pretty well set in its ways in the US.

Re:Ummm, sorry, that is one of their jobs

[shentino]

More like Oracle is accusing google of stabbing it in both shoulders and the judge is forcing it to only pick one shoulder to sue for.

Now if the judge were to throw out specific claims instead of putting a hard cap on the number and let Oracle choose what to let google get away wtih, that would make better sense.

If the judge is letting Oracle decide for itself which 3 of those 100 or so claims to proceed with, then it sorta implies that the judge thinks they are all potentially valid.

Re:Ummm, sorry, that is one of their jobs

[N1AK]

What's the alternative? Have the judge hear 132 different cases with say 20 cases of prior art each? Assuming that it takes a week to hear each claim, and a 1/2 for each prior art that would be 1,500 days, factor in holidays and weekends and you're talking about ~2,500 days (7-8 years). Obviously these numbers are pulled out of my ass, but I would be suprised if a case of such scale wouldn't take years. The other options are rush the process giving each claim and the prior art a mere fraction of the time they should, or decrease the scope of the case.

Given that a years long case would suit no one other than the lawyers I think the judge was right to force a limitation of scope. Asking Oracle to limit themselves to 3 claims is probably a little extreme, but anything more than single digits would become extremely unwieldy. Oracle should be able to show Googles wrong doing using its 3 strongest claims, it it can't it is unlikely that the other 129 would make any difference. Additionally Google should be able to show prior art by presenting its best 3 examples, if these aren't valid then the others were unlikely to be.

Re:Ummm, sorry, that is one of their jobs

[Ruke]

That's okay, though; the judge is letting Oracle decide which shoulder to try to prove that Google stabbed, and the penalty in this case is the same for one shoulder or two. Oracle gets to choose their bloodiest shoulder, and it stand to reason that if they're incapable of proving that it was Google who stabbed them there, they couldn't have successfully argued that Google stabbed them anywhere. (Because, again, Oracle gets to choose their strongest case to work on.)

Or, something like that. Maybe Google hit Oracle with a car, if that would help this analogy...

Oracle's Android...

[santhoshn]

I was shocked for a moment....

Re:Oracle's Android...

[russlar]

Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Android

Re:Oracle's Android...

[tomhudson]

Sorry to have shocked you (though I bet Oracle now wishes they did own Android). What can I say, I had to fit it into the subject character limit, and I didn't notice how strange it looks until you pointed it out.

Re:Oracle's Android...

[Billly Gates]

Yeah it costs $599 per cpu and requires a contract dictating how many users you can call and txt with the phone. After a certain low number you need to pay a seat fee for the amount on your contact lists.

Also you are forbidden to test it and post about the phones capabilities or limitations on any social networking site online. It will require huge customization with a few experts getting the best usage of the phone but it will handle calls better than any other product! Just take Oracle's word since no one can talk about it.

Re:Oracle's Android...

[afidel]

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Re:not cool

[somersault]

It would appear that the judge knows fine that they're just trolling, and has acted accordingly.

132 Spam Emails

[stewbacca]

I received 132 emails for little blue pills. All it took was for me to click on one of them!

Re:not cool

[bsDaemon]

Ah, Communism -- The One True Scotsman of political philosophy.

Re:not cool

[mcvos]

Patents have the same problem. They may work well with single inventors inventing steam engines and telephones, but it doesn't scale well to multinational pharma and software companies.

Re:not cool

[zeroshade]

"communism has never been practiced" != "communism doesn't work"

It means that the attempts people made for "communism" wasn't actually communism but their interpretation of it which, because of the changes and differences from what communism theoretically is, it didn't work. You can't definitively say that communism doesn't work until it is actually attempted.

Re:not cool

[Kamiza Ikioi]

As I always say, Communism is as American as apple pie... "family" could literally be interpreted as producing a Communist state between two adults. That is, of course, taking into account that the children are under a totalitarian dictatorship at birth, with a slow progression to forming their own communist house once they turn 18.

Re:Google elected the judge

[urulokion]

Donations to a the campaign of an Federal Judge who is appointed for life?

I don' thin' so.

In Soviet Russia

[Chas]

In America, you make party disappear!
In Soviet Russia, party make YOU disappear!

Re:not cool

[GodfatherofSoul]

My high school social studies teacher had the best quote. Communism is the perfect form of government, but only if people are perfect. It's so wildly impractical to implement as we've seen in every country that's tried. On the other side of the equation are the pure Free Market governments that can't sustain themselves either.

Re:not cool

[Nadaka]

Communism has never been practiced... on a national scale. Plenty of practicing communist groups exist and some of them have been around longer than the word communism.

Re:not cool

[anyGould]

At most the judge should have booted them off without prejudice.

It makes sense in this context - if it was without prejudice, then whoever lost would simply grab another handful and start the court case over again.

Re:not cool

[anyGould]

Communism has never been practiced... on a national scale. Plenty of practicing communist groups exist and some of them have been around longer than the word communism.

Most households could be classified as communist.

Yes, that means your neighbors are practicing communists!

The other Scotsman

[imric]

would be free market economics - it fails harder the closer markets come to it, but the excuse used for those failures is always that the market wasn't free enough...

*chuckle*

Moot = debatable

[Unequivocal]

trial is still worth holding, or if the case is now moot.

Not to be too pedantic but I can't help myself: the question is actually whether the case is no longer moot. Moot means debatable. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moot

Re:Moot = debatable

[Lord_Byron]

I would like to draw your attention to the second definition at the link you posted, "of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic."

Re:Moot = debatable

[parnasus]

Actually, citing the source you provided, the second definition is more appropriate: of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic.

Re:not cool

[Just Some Guy]

It means that the attempts people made for "communism" wasn't actually communism but their interpretation of it

As opposed to your interpretation of "communism", which is clearly truer to the original intent. I would like to introduce you to my friend, the True Scotsman.

Re:not cool

[shentino]

Claims should be litigatable if they have merit. Arbitrarily telling a plaintiff they have to shit-can X number of claims just because "you filed too much" isn't kosher.

It's a justiceability issue that has no basis on the actual merits of the claims.

it's like getting beat up and having to pick which injury you get to sue for.

I'm all for Google winning, but I want them to win fair and square.

Re:not cool

[anyGould]

Actually, it's exactly what it's like.

If you get in a fight, you don't get to charge them with assault once for every punch. It's an all-or-nothing deal.

If Oracle can't win with their three best arguments, then the other 120 weren't very likely either.

If it makes you feel any better, I'd imagine the losing side will appeal on those grounds either way.

The judge doesn't choose.

[pavon]

The judge didn't throw out any claims or prior art. He declared that Oracle needs to cut down their claims to a total of 3, and once this has been done Google will then need to cut their instances of prior art down to 8. It is completely up to them which survive.

This is all clearly explained in TFA, so there is no point in speculating.