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Oracle Seeks $9.3 Billion For Google's Use Of Java In Android (computerworld.com)
angry tapir quotes a report from Computerworld: Oracle is seeking as much as $9.3 billion in damages in a long-running copyright lawsuit against Google over its use of Java in Android, court filings show. Oracle sued Google six years ago, claiming the search giant needs a license to use parts of the Java platform in Google's market-leading mobile OS.
The two companies first went to trial in 2012, but the jury was split on whether or not Google's use of Java was protected by "fair use." Now they're headed back to the courtroom for a new trial scheduled to begin May 9, where Oracle's Larry Ellison and Google's Eric Schmidt will be present. Currently, the sum Oracle is asking for is about 10 times as much as when the two companies went to trial in 2012.
That's why Sun was actually an investment worth making. They hope to make more off of lawsuits with Sun's IP than they paid for Sun.
Oracle's business model at this point is based off of extracting as much money out of existing customers and through lawsuits as possible. They reached the saturation point in the database market long ago.
I am fully aware that the law suit is a bit more complex than simply using Java in a product, but I still think that Oracle is sending a weird signals to their existing and potential customers:
"Feel free to use our products for free but if you get successful we will sue you to get a piece of the cake."
I miss Sun!
Did you expect them to state that they were going to be an IP troll in a public document?
Oracle likes to boast about Java being installed on so many devices. And people use Java to make Android software. You'd think they'd be thanking Google instead of trying to mug them.
God spoke to me
It works both ways, but the Plaintiff's strategy can't really change, they are locked into the arguments they've already made. In civil trials all the evidence that can be presented and all the base arguments and defenses have to be filed to keep the trial as fair as possible. They can certainly fine tune and try to adjust their prior arguments but the best chance for the Plaintiff is to catch the Defendant off guard with a presentation of the evidence that can't be countered effectively. They would have used their best bullets in the first trial and now Google knows what they are and how best to defend against them because of the feedback they got from Jurors of the previous trial.
It's possible that Oracle could find a new "bullet" to use in this trial that is in line with all their arguments up to the trial but the chances are pretty slim or they would have used it during the first trial. You simply don't hold back on your evidence, you expend all your best attacks. They won't catch Google's lawyers off guard with a refinement of those same arguments.
It's a statistically known fact that a second trial always favors the defendant, this is true in both Criminal and Civil trials. The criminal trials even have a freer hand to make completely different arguments and propose new motives where in the civil trial they can't argue outside the prior boundaries they established in the run-up to the first trial. This also limits Google because they can't make defenses outside the ones they proposed but they can and will find evidence to blunt Oracles best attacks and that could swing the next trial into their favor.
C# is too MS-tied with a similar legal-greed risk
Actually C# had already a freer license by the early 2000s. I distinctly remember pointing this out and people dismissing my concerns with Java since back then Sun was one of the good guys.
C++ is too low-level to replace Java and C#.
Modern, core C++ is about as high level as Java and without the JVM overhead. Read up on it. The C++ core as proposed by Bjarne has a good chance of becoming the Java replacement.
No silly imp. Compaq only reverse engineered the BIOS and did a clean-room implementation so that Microsoft DOS would boot on their hardware. It's the BIOS API/spec they dealt with, and they only implemented enough to get it working.
It's only fucked up because of companies like SUN flooding the patent office, which can't keep up and let's dumb obvious things get through. Your addition patent would fail in any kind of trial and be invalidated, unless you managed to discover some truly novel method and unheard of method of addition, and no "with a computer" doesn't count.
Why do you think that? I'm interested in your legal reasoning (or references to legal reasoning).
Because copyright law defines what a "derived work" is.
A clean room implementation is an independent implementation of some specification. As specifications are not covered by copyright law (the law explicitly says so) multiple implementation of such a specifications are not a derived works of each other. And as the "origin", the specification, is not copy-right-able, it can't be a derived work of the specification by definition.
The primary work, from which the specification probably was "derived" is not related to the implementations of that specification. Not related "under copyright law". Obviously "intellectually" they are related.
The core argument for understanding what a derived work is, is always: "does the derived work "incorporate" pieces of the original work?" If not: it is not derived.
Unfortunately there where some misguided rulings in the USA that declared linking to dynamic linked libraries a derived work of those libraries. No idea what the status about that is right now. In my (and Europe's) interpretation a DLL has an interface which is an API/specification, so that the implementation can be replaced and hence the client using that API/DLL is not derived from the DLL. (If it was static linked the library would be part of the code and hence the whole executable would be a derived work of that library)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
For this to be true, APIs must be copyrightable. Which is obvious bullshit, regardless of what the courts may say on the matter.
It was not an argument, merely a point. And it's as subtle as the situation requires, which is to say, not at all.
The notion that APIs are copyrightable is bullshit, because APIs describe what is done, not how it is done. It is unfortunate that we have courts in this country that are unable to comprehend that simple fact, and everyone in the industry should make every effort to counter that - because copyrightable APIs represent a major threat to innovation and interoperability for all of us.
What is the license for ISO C APIs? I don't recall any special verbiage to that effect in the Standard, and by itself that document is copyrighted by ISO. What if they decide to enforce that copyright against implementations? What if ECMA does the same for JavaScript?