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No Patent Infringement Found In Oracle vs. Google
sl4shd0rk writes "Today, the jury in the Oracle vs. Google trial found no infringement of patents by Google. The jury deliberated about 30 minutes to reach the verdict, bringing an end to the second phase of the trial, and a beginning to the damage phase, which may be very little of what Oracle originally asked for. Still no word on API copyright issues. Judge Alsup will be ruling on that in the near future, and it will certainly have an impact on the developer community."
If the APIs turn out to be non-copyrightable, does this mean we can really all enjoy/suffer Java for free?
Gotta love how the entire time we heard magic numbers from oracle, all fud, all pulling the microsoft blasphemy train, and the entire thing was clearly debunked by a jury faster than anyone's head can spin. Good thing I got to keep track of the shills.
groklaw had plenty of coverage highlighting exactly this.
I hope people know that this is typical for google and that people already knew the answer before the case even came forward. Now go back and stroll those articles to look who the trolls were from the old articles. History/Karma's a bitch, huh. one troll example .
That's kind of damning. Apparently Oracles case was so weak a group of largely non-technical people decided it was much of nothing in 30 minutes. That's basically the time it takes for them to go into the room, all get coffee and donuts and take a vote.
why is there even a damages phase if Google has been found to not be in violation?
Hmmm... Thursday last week till today... that's a about 30 minutes according to Oracle's 'simulations' ... ;-)
.. if only.
The jury has been deliberating on the patent infringement since last Wednesday. Not sure where the submitter for the 30 minutes from.
No sig, sorry.
Our reporter provides this:
Clerk: Question 1: has Oracle proved by preponderance of evidence that Google infringed?
Claim 11: not proven 27: no 29: no 39: no 40: no 41: no
Question 2: not proven 1: no 20: no
Question 3: no answer, no response, not applicable.
Unanimous. The jury is dismissed. There will be no damages phase for them to endure.
Jury deliberated about a week, not 30 minutes. And the jury has been dismissed, there is no "damages phase" of the trial. Come on, /., it's not that hard to get it right.
There will be no damage phase. Judge has sent the jury home. Judge will handle damages himself based on agreements between Oracle and Google. Basically Oracle will get a few thousand for the 9 lines of code and a couple thousand for the test files. Then they will spend that money in one day in lawyer fees on the appeal. It is also important to note that this trial only covered 2 patents. Oracle can try again with different patents. However it should be noted that these were likely their best patents to use against Google.
Not sure where the submitter for the 30 minutes from.
Maybe same place English went?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"Though the jury has been dismissed, the core issue in the trial is still undecided. Judge William Alsup will rule himself on whether the Java APIs are subject to copyright, and he expects to do so sometime next week."
for -> got. Slashcode needs a keyboard transposition checker.
No sig, sorry.
It's interesting to note that the only reason it took them that long was because the jury foreman was the only hold out in favor of Oracle. Apparently he was the one responsible for many of the questions that the jury kept sending to the judge.
Anyway, glad this is (almost) over. The only real thing left is for Judge Alsup to determine if the APIs are copyrightable at all. My personal bet is that he will rule that they are not and that this will drive a stake through the heart of Oracle and (hopefully) Larry Ellison.
But as PJ at GrokLaw keeps telling us: never make a bet on a legal ruling.
Basically Oracle failed to prove its case. Oracle had its expert say Google infringed. Google had it expert say they didn't infringe. The patent claims were a technical and vague. There was no way a layperson could find that one expert was right and the other was wrong. The Jury with no choice but to find Oracle didn't prove its case.
30 minutes to weigh the evidence for Oracle v. Google.... the rest of the time to tell lawyer and America's Cup syndicate owner jokes
Kudos to the jury. They put a lot of effort into understanding the issue at hand. Based on courtroom reporting, the jury paid attention and they asked clarifying questions while deliberating to make sure they understood. Software patents are a mess. Oracle's arguments were terrible from a CS standpoint (and their expert should be embarrassed).
I believe the only issue still on the table is API copyrightability which Judge Aslup will rule on as a matter of law. The jury found for Oracle in that instance because the jury instructions essentially mandated it. I expect Aslup will rule for Google on that claim as well.
Oracle's current claim for money is literally for 9 lines of code called rangeCheck (which anyone in a high school intro to java class could write), and 8 test files copied by a subcontractor and never distrusted to end users.
A certain Oracle paid blogger will still manage to post how Oracle basically got everything it wanted.
This will not stop Sun Microsys... (ahem, sorry Oracle). Companies that choose to innovate in the courtroom will not let something like a dismissal of a single court case stop them from trying to leach on and suck innovation from other companies.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I believe the judge kinda lead his opinion by saying that he disagreed with them being copyrighted, based on his comments about RangeCheck ("I could do this myself any day"). There are zero damages on the table now though, which is a far cry from 6 billion dollars - so the rest of this case should finish quickly. However, there is a question of whether the CAFC gets involved at the appeal level and simply rules pro-patent like they seem to do with everything lately, and whether the recent supreme court decision will impact that as well.
The jury wasn't bribed. One of the Jurors was dismissed for being late because of car problems. The other was dismissed for being sick. With money on the line no juror would be dismissed for those reasons. If they were bribed they wouldn't have taken a week to reach a verdict either.
I cannot feel the slightest shred of sympathy for Oracle over this. When it comes to damages they'll be lucky if they receive a sum which pays for their legal expenses. This is somewhat removed from the beeelions they originally wanted.
Dear Oracle, Apparently your lawyers are about the same quality as your databases. When your lawyers lost, did they email technical support and receive the answer, "Please restart your database"--you know, because they hadn't tried that 5 times.
That's actually not certain until we have the ruling on the SSO copyright. Per the May 16 Stipulation and Order, one of two things will happen:
1. Alsup will rule the SSO's aren't protected by copyright, in which case rangeCheck and the copied test files are the only infringements to consider. In that event, both parties have waived trial by jury and Oracle has waived any claim to actual damages or infringers profits, and Alsup will set an award for statutory damages only, and the trial will be done. (And the appeals will start.)
2. Alsup will rule that the SSO are copyrightable, in which case neither party has waived jury trial on any portion of the copyright damages, and the parties have agreed to a two-part trial on the SSO Claim damages (and, it seems, a separate part covering rangeCheck and the test files), so it looks like in that case there would be a three-phase trial on damages with a whole new jury.
I believe the judge kinda lead his opinion by saying that he disagreed with them being copyrighted, based on his comments about RangeCheck ("I could do this myself any day").
Though I believe the judge will hold them to be non-copyrightable, if he does so based on that reason, it's immediately reversible on appeal for multiple reasons. One is that the judge is neither an expert nor a witness (nor can he be), so his independently created facts are inadmissible.
The second, and more important reason, is that ability to re-create something is irrelevant to whether it's copyrightable. You sit me down with a typewriter and a case of Mountain Dew, and I'll write you a story about boy wizard Harry Potter, with a scar on his forehead, who attends Hogwart's Castle. Or I'll draw you a picture of Mickey Mouse. Or I'll copy out Hamlet's soliloquy. Or I'll copy out sheet music for Van Halen's Jump. But none of that means that novels, art, plays, or music are non-copyrightable. In other words, the fact that the judge can play the piano, or draw a character, or even re-write RangeCheck doesn't mean that music, drawings, or APIs can not be copyrighted.
So maybe it's worth the collateral damage? (/s)
"Good news, everyone!"
Based on other similar cases by kinds of issues, length of trial, and counsel involved, estimates of Oracle's trial costs I've seen have been in the range of millions and possibly at over $10M. Unless they win the API copyright issue or get the patent verdicts reversed on appeal, the maximum damages they can get (since only statutory damages would then be on the table) would be $150K. So, yeah, they'd be lucky to get anywhere close to their legal costs out of this.
According to reports, the jury deliberated for 30 minutes _after their last question was answered_. They deliberated for days, as parent says, and asked several questions.
Also, the summary is a bit off concerning the "damages" phase. The original plan called for such a 3rd phase to be held with jury, but not any more.Jury's been dismissed, and judge will determine damages (if any) after ruling on the copyrightability question.
Imagine the machines that run 75% of the world's stock markets becoming illegal overnight. Such a decision would essentially bring the computing industry and every industry that depends on it to a grinding halt.
Don't assume that our (and most other non-connected people/business) pain will be shared by our banker and government "friends". They have before [1] and probably will again, exempt themselves from horrible laws, decisions, and other externalities, while continuing to profit handsomely:
The provision, which my colleague Edward Wyatt detailed in an article ahead of the House’s vote on the bill last month, has only one purpose: to allow the banking industry to skirt paying for certain important patents involving “business methods."
They (and their bought government cronies) will simply evade disaster (and in the process bet for/against, profiting from others' misery).
[1] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/in-a-bill-wall-street-shows-clout/
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. . . in an effort to save some shred of credibility.
The judge's mention of how easy it is to write rangeCheck seemed to be directed at Oracle's claims that copying that piece of code allowed Google to move to market faster and save millions of dollars, and not whether it was copyrightable. In other words, he's saying that because it's so trivial, anything Google gained and Oracle lost as a result of that copying doesn't justify a large damages award.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
The law does not work this way. You can't just suspend law enforcement because too many things that depend on breaking the law would stop working. The lawful answer is always to do the right thing, and if you have to stop billions of dollars' worth of illegal activity, well, tough. I am not, of course, arguing that this is a good thing for civilization, but "too big to fail" must never be allowed as an excuse for criminal activity.
And a lot of computers hosting illegal content would also be deemed illegal. And the RIAA, MPAA would come in and say "Don't worry, we'll help you take down all those dirty dirty illegal computers, just grant us more laws in our favor and we'll gladly take on the task."
It's all part of their plan you see.
And before you know it, the only legal computers will be those blessed by the **AA and hard wired to be under their constant surveillance.
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What did you for->get?
owned
The jury deliberated for a week, not 30 minutes.
The problem with your example is that the patents covered by the provision you are talking about are in fact utter rubbish. These are patents held by patent trolls on simple business processes (one example is the process of scanning checks!) that should have never been granted in the first place. The business model of these companies entails suing other companies for infringing on what should have never have been granted. It is patent trolling that the banks are getting relief from.
As such the earmark that they got into law is actually a service to humanity in general, which I would gladly have voted for.
If you had an example that covered a legitimate patent you would have a stronger case.
The process that got this provision into law is pretty dubious, and the law itself may actually be unconstitutional because it lets the patent office review cases already decided in court, but the actual situation the law covers is one that is wholly one that needs correction.
The second, and more important reason, is that ability to re-create something is irrelevant to whether it's copyrightable. You sit me down with a typewriter and a case of Mountain Dew, and I'll write you a story about boy wizard Harry Potter, with a scar on his forehead, who attends Hogwart's Castle. Or I'll draw you a picture of Mickey Mouse. Or I'll copy out Hamlet's soliloquy. Or I'll copy out sheet music for Van Halen's Jump. But none of that means that novels, art, plays, or music are non-copyrightable. In other words, the fact that the judge can play the piano, or draw a character, or even re-write RangeCheck doesn't mean that music, drawings, or APIs can not be copyrighted.
There's one major flaw with this argument. If you've never read or looked at Harry Potter, could you rewrite the story word for word? If you never saw Mickey Mouse, could you draw him? If you've never read Shakespear, could you write his plays word for word based only on your understanding of the English Language? It may be plagarism, but it's not likely an exact copy of the original. Now lets move on to Java. How many different ways is there to write a procedure that can check a range of numbers? Probably a few, but not much more than a few.
Given the structure of the language, there's only so much you can do to not create an exact duplicate of a function that someone else created, and even programmers have a tendancy to copy themselves. We find a way to do something that is efficient and effective, we are going to use it again and again. I can pretty much guarantee that a 9 line function that I've written is going to copy someone's algorithm somewhere and my only defense is how I use my comments, which may or may not be a factor in determining if a program was copied or not.
In summary, the big difference between your examples and copying a Function, your example means that someone could not create an exact copy without having the source material to reference from. With a programming function in a structured language, it is HIGHLY likely that two people could come up with the exact same code completely independant of one another without having met or seen each other's work.
I imagine how the guy who copied those 9 lines of code must be feeling.
He cost Google a truckload of money in legal fees.
I just expect the judge to give an honest value for those 9 lines. Like $80 or something. Simply for justice (in financial short term, it matters little if they cost $90 or $9000, since the lawyer fees are much higher).
A free!
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
His Majesty's Ship Queen Mister Laurence Joseph Eilson born August 17 1944, Bronx New York, got kicked in the balls by the jury and then judge!
Struggling to his feet a bailif grabed Queen Mister Eilson's head and 'knee-ed' his face sending Queen Mister Eilson cartwheeling backwards to the floor, which stopped his cartwheeling in the air, to the delight of the 'peanut gallery' assembled for the trial.
A pet dog, chuwawa, known as 'Mr. Pickles' of one of the 'peanut gallery' attendees strolled to Queen Mister Eilson, and releived his bladder onto Queen Mister Eilson's face.
Queen Mister Eilson was quoated afterwards "phuu ... phuu ... phuu".
xD LoL
it is HIGHLY likely that two people could come up with the exact same code completely independant of one another without having met or seen each other's work.
I think you're missing the fact that your "two people" are, in fact, one person. Josh Bloch wrote both the infringed and the infringing code. It's just an honest mistake.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Since Android is open Oracle actually have the source code for it. Its nature is laid bare for all to see. They know precisely what it does, and how it does it, and have known this whole time. They had a vast arsenal of patents and picked out the most applicable ones. With years to prepare their case and no way for Google to deny their own source code, Oracle's team should have had a slam dunk here if they had a case at all. But apparently, they didn't. The whole time.
And then bringing this weak case to stand in court and make these absurd claims:
. APIs are copyrightable
. Nine lines of 15 million justify infringers profits
. An array index is a symbolic reference
. Preprocessing a non-running executable is "dynamic optimization"
. Pattern matching is the same as simulating execution
... and other such nonsensical gems. It boggles the mind what depths of folly these were dredged from.
Remember this next time somebody's suing over IP: It ain't over 'til it's over.
Oracle needs to be held up to considerable ridicule over this one.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Not even a dollar. Not even a cent. Not even a fraction of a cent sometime in the distant future.
No damage was done.
The fact that it took all of 30 minutes to decide I think really speaks to the frivolity of this sort of case.
Judge: "Does the jury have a verdict?"
Foreman: "Yes your honour. We find that Oracle is guilty of 1st degree retarded."
Sort of like the RIAA suing Limewire for 72 TRILLION dollars.
I hope the "decision" of that case, is that they get to hold down each RIAA exec and the Judge gets to punch each one in the fact once, for every trillion dollars they sued for...
The API concept can be extended to the physical world too. Something as simple as a power plug, light bulb socket, a door knob or even a set of wheels for your car could be argued that its is an 'interface' of sorts, and should be protected.
And for those that remember, the light bulb socket DID go thru this same thing with Edison and Tesla where old Edison wanted to be his typical pita.. which is why we now have fluorescent lights. So it can happen again.
And i agree it would totally cripple society.
---- Booth was a patriot ----