Oracle Sues Lodsys For Patent Trolling

RWarrior(fobw) writes "PJ reports at Groklaw that Oracle has sued well-known patent troll Lodsys, asking for declaratory judgement in the Eastern District of Texas that Oracle and its customers don't need Lodsys licenses, and that Lodsys patents are invalid anyway. 'It seems that Lodsys has been going after Oracle customers, and they in turn have been asking Oracle to indemnify them. Lodsys, methinks, has made a mistake. One doesn't go after Oracle's money. No. No. Never a good plan. I suspect Oracle will go for damages, tripled, and all their expenses, legal fees, etc. when this is over.' PJ also points out that which companies are the good guys and which are the bad guys depends on which case you're looking at. "

Comments

confused

[dmitrygr]

Whom do I cheer for now?

Re:confused

[Anonymous Coward]

The lawyers. If you're going to cheer for someone, you might as well cheer for the guys who you know always wins.

Re:confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Freddy vs. Jason... Alien vs. Predator... Godzilla vs. King Kong...

Humanity is always screwed.

Re:confused

[StormReaver]

Whom do I cheer for now?

That's easy: neither.

Oracle is an evil company suing another evil company, but neither one is the good guy. Oracle's interests just happen to align with The Right Thing to Do on this occasion, so they are on the side of good by pure coincidence.

Don't cheer for Oracle, but cheer for the good thing Oracle just happens to be doing at this fleeting moment in time, for Oracle will still be evil at the next earliest opportunity.

Re:confused

[NotBorg]

Finally someone points out that lawyers are not human!

Re:confused

[NotBorg]

Whom do I cheer for now?

You don't have to cheer at all. You can simply resort to booing, which is just as fun and you get to throw things!

Re:confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Whom do I cheer for now?

If Oracle wins this case, the precedent will hurt their ability to patent troll in the future too, so...as painful as this is...cheer for Oracle.

Re:confused

[mark-t]

So, ideally, they engage in a long and drawn out battle that culminates in their mutual annihilation?

Re:confused

[reve_etrange]

Ideally, the battle also results in a precedent that weakens patent protection for algorithms.

Who's the bigger troll here?

[ilikenwf]

I mean, Oracle did just basically lose a huge patent troll case over a freely available API implementation...

Re:Who's the bigger troll here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad they lost, but when I think patent trolling, I usually think of a bogus shell company that hasn't actually created anything. They're just paper companies dumping cash into legal action to turn a profit, designed to shield the players behind it from any kind of retribution.

So it might be a bit of a stretch, but at least I'll give Oracle some credit on for doing what they were convinced was legitimate protection of their own work... even if it was a shitty thing to do and failed miserably.

Re:Who's the bigger troll here?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given that their 'APIs are intrinsically copyrighted, even if implementations are entirely distinct' theory was both novel and potentially wildly dangerous to the entire software industry, I say fuck 'em.

Re:Who's the bigger troll here?

[amicusNYCL]

The Oracle vs. Google case was not about patent trolling, that was about Oracle trying to get money from Google any possible way they could. It turns out that they couldn't, but you can't really blame them for trying (it's their nature). That is distinct from a patent troll, where they go and acquire patents specifically for the sole purpose of extorting other companies. Oracle at least makes legitimate revenue doing legitimate engineering work.

I believe that case wasn't even about patents though, it was about copyright.

Re:Who's the bigger troll here?

[Grishnakh]

It's certainly bad behavior, but it's very distinct from patent trolls. The entire business case for patent trolls is to get a patent on some obvious BS, written in a nebulous way that it'll certainly apply to upcoming work (I hesitate to use the word "inventions" here), and then when that technological development comes into widespread use, sue. It's just like how mythical trolls under bridges demand payment from passers-by even though the troll isn't providing any service at all; the patent troll doesn't actually do anything useful; their patent isn't even useful, it's so vague and nebulous and doesn't have any details to actually describe how to do anything.

Oracle with their Google/Java case was a little different. They actually provided a useful product, Java, and were mad that Google made their own work-alike version of Java and made a lot of money with it, without paying them anything for it. It would be a lot like some Linux distro including WINE, somehow improving WINE greatly so that it actually works well with ALL Windows software, and then selling computers with this new Linux/WINE distro as a fully-compatible replacement for Windows, and becoming wildly successful, and then MS suing because WINE uses Windows APIs, even though everything underneath is totally different and there's no code copied from Windows OS.

I suck

[smittyoneeach]

Avoid patent trolls,
And that lawfare schtick,
Like facial moles,
Lest one suffer a prick.
Burma Shave

Damages?

[arth1]

Forgive me for being dense, but "I suspect Oracle will go for damages, tripled" seems silly - can you sue for damages in a preemptive lawsuit, giving that you are technically the defendant?

Re:The enemy of my enemy ...

[Isaac Remuant]

From the groklaw article.

See why I always tell you that to avoid whiplash, don't look at the parties in litigation and decide who you like, but anaylze the issues involved and plant your flag accordingly? Hence, here we are, on the same side of this issue, Groklaw and Oracle. Who'd-a thunk it last week?

Seems like a pattern

[Anubis IV]

Lodsys is the troll that went after iOS developers for in-app purchases, even though Apple had already licensed the rights to that patent on behalf of their developers. It's not exactly surprising to see that they'd try the same thing with Oracle, nor is it surprising to see that Oracle is following Apple's lead in trying to intervene on behalf of the smaller guys. After all, taking on the big companies is hard, but if you can target their customers or users, you can oftentimes win. Lodsys seems to have made a business of doing so.

Not a suit for "trolling"

[Theaetetus]

A suit for "trolling" would be a suit over malicious prosecution, or harassment, or extortion, or something like that. This is a suit for noninfringement and declaratory judgement, saying that (i) Oracle doesn't infringe 4 Lodsys patents; and (ii) even if they do, the patents are invalid. These are the same claims that every defendant files in their response when they get sued. Oracle is simply taking a preemptive shot, presumably because Lodsys sent them a letter asking them to take a license.

The only odd part is that when accused infringers take this preemptive shot, they usually don't do it in the Eastern District of Texas. It's actually one of the reasons to file first when someone hints at a lawsuit - you get to choose where to go.