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."

Comments

Does this mean Java really is free?

[jonniesmokes]

If the APIs turn out to be non-copyrightable, does this mean we can really all enjoy/suffer Java for free?

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha. You troll idiot. There were only nine lines of copied code and the only reason it was there is because the guy that submitted it originally to openJDK is the same guy that put it in Android. The judge learned java for this trial and even he said he could have wrote rangeCheck in a few minutes and had even done so accidentally many times.

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If the APIs turn out to be non-copyrightable, does this mean we can really all enjoy/suffer Java for free?

It's a great deal more important than that: If APIs are copyrightable, API-compatible implementations of anything without that thing's blessing would be on legally shaky ground. I'll leave imagining the technology world in an alternate universe where IBM simply sued Compaq for producing an API-compatible BIOS to the reader; but that's the sort of magnitude we are talking here...

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[ColdWetDog]

Well, you missed first post Mr. I'm-new-here. But keep on trolling. Somebody might believe you.

Come on editors. Catch a clue with this nonsense.

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[characterZer0]

If they are copyrightable, will we all have to switch to Scala running on the JVM?

If the APIs are copyrightable, the bytecode spec will also be copyrightable. So you cannot write a JVM without Oracle's permission. This was the problem for Apache Harmony. If APIs are found to be non-copyrightable but the bytecode spec still is for some reason, Google could write (or allow others to write) a Dalvik VM for other platforms and we could continue writing Java code but compile it for the DVM instead of the JVM.

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[ais523]

That wasn't the Jury deciding whether they were copyrightable; they'd been asked about their opinion assuming it was (juries are supposed to determine facts, rather than law). That was the jury (failing to) decide whether Google were nonetheless allowed to use the API under fair use, even if it were copyrighted.

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm imagining that world... and I just see a whole lot of licenses being signed in a hurry. Big money creeps get richer, and independents get more shut out. Especially of the internet, and computing.

What? You think anyone is lobbying congress for the rights of the latter group? Nobody in power minds if this goes down at all, and very few people in the suburbs and Walmart do either.

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[Bigby]

That more along the right path. However, I think it will just wind up like the patent industry. APIs will be used as blackmail against each other...effectively crowding out the little guys and startups.

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[Forever Wondering]

It doesn't matter anyway. There were only nine lines of copied code and the only reason it was there is because the guy that submitted it originally to openJDK is the same guy that put it in Android.

IANAL, but if this is so, this would indicate the original submitter would be the copyright author for the code ("rangeCheck"). If s/he was not a Sun employee at the time (e.g. the submission was done as free software), s/he would be free to submit to both code bases. This person would be the only person in the world that has such right. Thus, rangeCheck is not even copied from one code base to another. Ergo, even if the code is identical, there is no copyright infringment.

Didn't take long, did it?

[poetmatt]

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 .

Re:Didn't take long, did it?

[X0563511]

History/Karma's a bitch, huh. one troll example .

How is that a troll? It looks like a perfectly reasonable, logical, opinion. (note: we are allowed to have differing opinions, and "troll" does not mean "does not share my opinion")

Re:Didn't take long, did it?

[poetmatt]

It was the standard "I hate microsoft , but....(opposite argument)" troll. It's done all the time, and the phrase is repeated almost the exact same way every single time. Any time people fail to remember that a convicted monopolist is a convicted monopolist is to deny facts that have been proven in court. Or as the phrase goes "leopards don't change their spots", and this has proven true, especially for large companies.

Re:Didn't take long, did it?

[LordLucless]

It was the standard "I hate microsoft , but....(opposite argument)" troll

I believe what you call a troll, most rational people call "an argument". If you want to debunk his points, then actually debunk them, don't just try and smear the poster with ad hominem. Just to help you out, his arguments were:
    1) MS-DOS wasn't that bad
    2) Windows XP is viable
    3) SCO is more evil that Microsoft
Incidentally, the argument he was countering was that everything Microsoft has ever done is evil, and it is the most evil software company ever. If you've got time once you've demolished the above points, you can prove that argument for extra credit.

Go to it!

Ouch

[Anonymous Coward]

The jury deliberated about 30 minutes

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.

Summary slightly wrong

[ZombieBraintrust]

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.

Re:Summary slightly wrong

[DickBreath]

The judge will be deciding the damages on the 9 line RangeCheck function which was found to be infringed. So there is a damages phase, of sorts. The 9 lines include some blank lines. RangeCheck is a function to check if an array index is between zero inclusive and some upper bound. I imagine that Oracle has been severely financially damaged by Google having copied this highly sophisticated function.

Re:Summary slightly wrong

[R3d M3rcury]

One dollar. That's usually the case when you're right but it doesn't matter.