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Oracle Not Satisfied With Potential $150,000; Goes Against Judge's Warning
bobwrit writes with news about how the monetary damages in the Google v. Oracle case might shake out. On Thursday, Judge Alsup told Oracle the most it could expect for statutory damages was a flat $150,000, a far cry from the $6.1 billion Oracle wanted in 2011, or even the $2.8 million offered by Google as a settlement. However, Oracle still thinks it can go after infringed profits, even though Judge Alsup specifically warned its lawyers they were making a mistake. He said, "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions." Groklaw has a detailed post about today's events.
What the fuck are they talking about...? Google pirated a GPLed programming language and used it in Android?!! What damages could Oracle possibly be listing? I wanna know. Show the damages, Oracle.
The Admin and the Engineer
The engineer has admitted he "probably" copy-pasted the code over.
(Google wasn't exactly running a 'clean room', and Android engineers were also contributing to Sun Java.)
The engineer made was rewriting the sort function for dalvik and contributed it back to java. He was the original author of the java sort function, and reused the java sort range check function since he believed it would all be reintegrated back into the the original java sort.
Barring formatting changes, considering the exception is different depending on the case, there would still need to be nine lines. I do wonder why they did not use the if/else construct though. I seems kind of wasteful to run checks on cases at are no longer possible.
Oracle has a history of going after smaller companies, (Ask me how I know.) and threatening litigation. Smaller companies usually fold, and just pay out. It is cheaper than court. I love that they have decided to go after someone who can afford to say "Let's let the courts decide."
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Because stupid amounts of money have gotten involved.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Ahh, but there's 17 USC 504(b) to consider (emphasis mine)
Taken at face value, this means if Google infringed even a single line of code (let alone 9), Oracle is entitled to ALL of Google's gross revenue unless Google proves that each dollar was either
1) Used for expenses or
2) Attributable to some factor other than the infringed work
And you probably thought statutory damages were the most unjust part of copyright law.... turns out actual damages are even worse.
Unfortunately for Oracle, Google probably has armies of lawyers and accountants who can do the proving. Probably it will cost Google more than $150,000 just to do so.
Oracle is out exactly nothing because of Google's infringement. Google's benefit from using that code instead of rolling their own -- and they clearly intended to roll their own -- was less than an hour of a competent programmers time. So the benefit to Google was at most $200.
Copyright law is not intended to protect a few lines of code. It's intended to protect the ownership and merchantability of a significant body of work.
Let's hope they award Oracle what they ACTUALLY LOST by Google's mistake.
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