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After Android Trial, Google Demands $4M From Oracle
MikeatWired writes "Google is seeking $4 million from Oracle to cover the costs it incurred during this spring's epic legal battle over the Android mobile operating system, reports Caleb Garling. In a brief filed in federal court on Thursday night, Google lead counsel Robert Van Nest argued that Oracle is required to pay his company's legal costs because judge and jury ruled in favor of Google on almost every issue during the six-week trial. 'Google prevailed on a substantial part of the litigation,' read Google's brief. '[Oracle] recovered none of the relief it sought in this litigation. Accordingly, Google is the prevailing party and is entitled to recover costs.' Google has not publicly revealed an itemized list of its expenses, but the total bill included $2.9 million spent copying and organizing documents. According to the brief, the company juggled a mind-boggled 97 million documents during the case."
"Google has not publicly revealed an itemized list of its expenses, but the total bill included $2.9 million spent copying and organizing documents. According to the brief, the company juggled a mind-boggled 97 million documents during the case.""
Couldn't they have just put them on some sort of server and used some kind to search software to allow access.
2.9 million in copying?
I think I want to die.
97M pages @ $2.9M = 3 cents/page. Pretty reasonable since "copying and organizing" presumably includes labor.
This and a comment a few notches below reminds me of a story an old professor at my university told in an ethics class. He was an expert witness at trial where a state inspector was run over by a 'modern' paving machine. The defense lawyers requested a copy of the source code for the firmware in the machine. They came into the office one day to find on their fax machine pages and pages of printouts of the crap produced from opening the executable in Word. The executable, not the source code! Bottom line, when it comes to lawyers do not assume they have an ounce of common sense and depend upon them to charge you for their own mistakes.
Those 97 million pages didn't review, organize, and where necessary redact themselves. It doesn't matter what technology you use, if you care at all about the content it is expensive to deal with that many pages of written material. It's like proof-reading an early but complete draft of Atlas Shrugged 89,000 times over except with a subtle plot and only slightly better prose. It comes out to only $32.53 per reading of Atlas Shrugged, which is a better price than I would offer.
So, yeah, $97M is a bit much.
I assume you mean $2.9 million?
Well, Oracle lost.
it would make justice impossible to afford for the common man!
No, this should be the punishment for a company that looses. Do you think that a company should be able to come up to you and request MILLIONS of documents? Do you think a company should come up to you send you legal request after legal request for documents? So what if fits on $50 hard drive? It's the labor to go through the 20 million pages. You don't want to be giving out the wrong pages that have something valuable on it not related that Oracle could steal. If the "Common Man" could read a PAGE PER SECOND every second of every day and NEVER EVER SLEEP it would take him 231 days to go through all that.
Doesn't seem like any company should just be able to to do this without repercussion to me. That would make justice impossible for the common man.
US$ 2.9 million in copying? That's only like 3 or 4 MP3's.
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