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Schmidt Testifies Android Did Not Use Sun's IP
CWmike writes "Google built a 'clean room' version of Java and did not use Sun's intellectual property, Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, testified in court Tuesday. Schmidt said its use of Java in Android was 'legally correct.' On this day seven of the trial, Schmidt gave the jury a brief history of Java, describing its release as 'an almost religious moment.' He told the jury that Google had once hoped to partner with Sun to develop Android using Java, but that negotiations broke off because Google wanted Android to be open source, and Sun was unwilling to give up that much control over Java. Instead, Schmidt said, Google created the 'clean room' version of Java that didn't use Sun's protected code. Its engineers invented 'a completely different approach' to the way Java worked internally, Schmidt testified."
Isn't this basically what Linus Torvalds did with Linux? If it can be done with an OS couldn't you do it with a compiler or an interpreter? I'm not a programmer, so the likeliness of this story being true is beyond my ability to judge.
-- QED
This is exactly true. If it were truly a clean room implementation, they couldn't have possibly ended up with parts of Sun's Java in their code, even a single line. But they did. Not only that, Google engineers have said that they were looking at Sun documentation while they were writing Dalvik.
So Schmidt might be right. It could have been 'legally correct.' But it sure wasn't a clean room implementation.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Oracle has two goals. The first is to prove that Google copied them. They've already established this, though they might need to deal with a fair-use defense, or any other defense Google uses.
Their second, and to them very important, goal is to prove that Google willfully infringed, and benefited a lot from it. They want a big payment as a result of this.
I believe the focus on the TCK license is an attempt to get bigger damages.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Schmidt has dirty paws. I would not be surprised if this behavior is why Sergey Brin had to oust him. Name any market Google has created? Search? Mail? Maps? Online Docs? It's all polished implementations of other peoples well proven ideas. Their finest and purest idea was their first one: search ranking by citation.
AdWords. I'm unaware of any prior system that did automatic auctions for specific search terms. As far as Google's success, AdWords was equally as important as search, since it's the financial basis for the entire company. If you read some of the early history of Google their original sales methods were human centric, slow and no better than anyone else. AdWords started the flood of cash.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
"Google wanted Android to be open source, and Sun was unwilling to give up that much control over Java."
What?! Java already was open source, GPLv2. Since 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Java_implementations#Sun.27s_November_2006_announcement
It must be something else then, or what am I missing here?
Equitable and promissory estoppel: Sun helped project Harmony and was deeply involved in it's creation, to the extent that it infringed, it had permission to do so. Sun definitely received benefit from this arrangement as parts of Sun's own implementation were contributed, as a result of Harmony, by Google.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
Wow, talk about missing the forest by the trees. Did you even read that article? The point was not to single out the small piece of code as a smoking gun, but as an example of a lack of discipline in setting up the so-called "clean room" environment, which seems to cast the entire endeavor into question:
Nice ad hominem attack there, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
Carol vs. Ghost