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Oracle Ordered To Lower Damages Claim On Google
CWmike writes "Oracle has been ordered to lower its multibillion-dollar claim for damages in its patent infringement lawsuit against Google and its Android operating system, court papers show. Oracle's expert 'overreached' in concluding that Google owed up to $6.1 billion in damages for alleged infringement of Oracle's Java patents, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup said Friday in a sternly written order. The 'starting point' for Oracle's damages claim should be $100 million, adjusted up and down for various factors, he said. At the same time, Google was wrong to assert that its advertising revenue is not related to the value of Android and should therefore not be a part of Oracle's damages, the judge wrote. He also warned Google, 'there is a substantial possibility that a permanent injunction will be granted' if it is found guilty of infringement."
What are the chances that Google will:
1) alter the way the Dalvik VM works such that the same source will execute differently, although producing the same results, so that app developers code continues to work, or
2) launch a new language for developing Android apps, but with a conversion tool to take existing source and turn it into whatever the new language looks like (some other variant on c/java/whatever...lets face it they're all practically identical nowadays)?
And THAT is the answer to the question "why did Google not buy Sun". It is cheaper to just some nickels and dimes now. And I guess they didn't need Solaris.
All parties are recognizing software patents...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Interesting point. One could say that Google is doing Oracle a favor by using Java in the platform. I can't think of ANY software on my PCs that are written in Java but my Android device is chock-full of it.
Who the heck then will invest for capital intensive research like medicine and semi-conductor fab tech?
Perhaps you're looking at it backwards. With patents out of the picture, there will be a need to do things much, much cheaper and innovation will drive towards increasing efficiency rather than how to protect your monopoly. I love it when the drug argument is used regarding patents. I just answer sarcastically: yeah, because acetyl salicylic acid (more commonly known as Aspirin) which has been out of patent since forever is a real money-loser. You will never find generic/store brand painkillers containing this product. Here ends the sarcasm. Pharmacy companies complain about all the billions it takes to make a new drug and fail to mention that drugs still sell long after the patents expire. It's not like Lipitor has been pulled from the shelves (patent just expired recently). Yeah there's competition - so what? For every Coke there's a Pepsi, for every McDonalds there's a Burger King. Suck it up and earn your money like everyone else.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm ready to kill all software patents. Does Android compete with Oracle? (No, Oracle doesn't market phones or tablets and never will.) Does Android compete with Microsoft. (Not really.) Does Android compete with Apple. (No, if you want an iPhone you're not going to buy an Android phone and vice versa.) Did anybody other than Google put in the effort to create Android and deserve the rewards for doing so? (No, they just want to collect money for doing nothing more than filing a patents that they don't even use in this market.)
Who loses when all of these patents are enforced. (We, the public, do - Big Time!)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I am inclined to think that if Oracle wins this, then there are going to be a lot of other places that are going to end being afraid of utilizing Java in the future... which could spell the effective end of Java as a mainstream programming language (although it obviously wouldn't die completely), which can't possibly be good for oracle.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Seriously, at this point they'd probably be better off writing everything for Mono or another CLR clone - it's not like Microsoft isn't already asserting patent claims.
"Just wait for your competitor to do it for you, burning billions in the process, then manufacture it yourself at a cheaper price - you don't have R&D money to recoup - and undercut them to death." This accurately describes China's approach to saving R&D expenses.
Pharmaceutical companies do a lot of pure research. I work as at a pharmaceutical company in IT support for just the research labs. Of the labs my department support only a tiny portion do any development work. Almost all of the development work is done by labs in other divisions than the one supported by my department (actually this is changing as due to recent changes in corporate structure those divisions are finding out about us and starting to request our support).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I'd just like to be the first to say, "fuck Oracle".
I'm sorry to inform you but you are too late.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
They did a clean room implementation of Java that worked exactly the same way.
No, that's not quite right. Dalvik is a new virtual machine which, as I understand it, loads and executes bytecode in a way that's more efficient on low-power devices with limited resources. You start with a Java program, which you compile using the Oracle Java compiler. You then run it through an extra step that transforms the stock Java bytecode into Dalvik bytecode. Dalvik will not run regular Java code until you do this last part.
That said, it doesn't really matter. Dalvik could be a virtual machine that runs bytecode from a language called Vluuurm, which only runs backwards, and it could still violate Oracle's patents on virtual machine technology.
Breakfast served all day!
You seem to be confused this is not a case of software patents (at least not primarily, like apple-htc for example). I mean google did not use "the principles behind java". It did not use a new version of the language, it does not use different opcodes, it does not ... Google uses Java, verbatim, Google uses the binary format of java, verbatim (yes they package it *slightly* differently), Google uses the sun jvm (a secondary derivative, but that, too, is illegal), ... You use the very same development tools for java enterprise as you use for android development, which is the big advantage android has above other systems.
Google is guilty of copyright infringement. Java is not public domain, and anything unique about java is protected just like the contents of a book. It is fully owned by Oracle. Google simply took something that didn't belong to them, maimed it against the wishes of the original author (who should have complained sooner), and used it's massive weight to outcompete the original author in a matter of months. I, for one, do NOT think what google did is okay. Imagine this happening to something *you* wrote. I like the result, android is great, but the ends do not justify the means here.
Java is not public domain (actually none of the big languages is), nor is Java freely licenced (like C++ is, for example).