Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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.
They were deliberating since last week. Summary was wrong.
No sig, sorry.
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.
"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."
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.
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")
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
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.
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.
Maybe I'm missing something, but the "troll" you cite seems to be... well, not a troll. In fact, I completely agree with him/her/it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
I love shill bashing as much as the next guy, but that is a bad example.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
There is a damages phase because a 9 line RangeCheck function was copied. That 9 lines includes the blank lines in the function. The purpose of the function is to check if an array index is between zero inclusive and some upper bound. It's difficult to under estimate the tremendous potential damages value of such a complex and highly technical function.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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.
Thank you. Not everyone fails to comprehend how this works. There is more to the fudtrain than just "google is evil" stuff, and false flag trolls are extremely common.
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.
Please don't accuse Sun Microsystems of lacking innovation capability.
They may not have had very good business sense, but they sure built some cool stuff.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
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.
That's not a troll, and seriously the desperation you're exerting to prove that it is by posting AC and agreeing with yourself is damn shameful. If anyone is trolling here, it's you.
Nothing about the linked post sounded like a troll. Suggesting that Microsoft isn't the absolute spawn of Satan and may have done a thing or two right in its lifetime is in no way a trollish statement. It does not take a fan of Microsoft to accept this as the truth. Being a convicted monopolist doesn't suddenly mean everything that comes out of the company is bad.
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!
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
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.