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Android Is 'Fair Use' As Google Beats Oracle In $9 Billion Lawsuit (arstechnica.com)
infernalC writes: Ars Technica is reporting that the verdict is in, and that the jury decided that Google's duplication of several Java interfaces is fair use. Ars Technica writes that Google's Android OS does not infringe upon Oracle-owned copyrights because its re-implementation of 37 Java APIs is protected by "fair use." The jury unanimously answered "yes" in response to whether or not Google's use of Java APIs was a "fair use" under copyright law. The trial is now over, since Google won. "Google's win somewhat softens the blow to software developers who previously thought programming language APIs were free to use," Ars Technica writes. "It's still the case that APIs can be protected by copyright under the law of at least one appeals court. However, the first high-profile attempt to control APIs with copyright law has now been stymied by a "fair use" defense." The amount Oracle may have asked for in damages could have been as much as $9 billion.
Sometimes, juries do the right/sane thing.
Now PLEASE, supreme court, et al, don't let this warm feeling go away by overturning this.
well, don't know anything about the jury, but the judge I reckon has really earned respect from communities like this because to better understand the situation, he got quite familiar with Java itself: http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/...
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
This is bad for Oracle. They don't need the $9B but they need a club that big to force Google into cross-licensing deals on their distributed database patents. Because Oracle doesn't scale without them.
Otherwise they didn't need to spend $5.6B on Sun.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Oracle's Lawyer stated: "They copied 11,500 lines of code," Oracle attorney Peter Bicks said during closing arguments. "It's undisputed. They took the code, they copied it, and put it right into Android." My understanding is that google used the api's but wrote their own implementation, what does he base that accusation on?
The Judge generally weighs the jury's ruling pretty strongly. I honestly thought the jury would rule against google. Juries tend to be very conservative and they tend to side first with property rights. Oracle had some fairly compelling arguments too. Ars has the slides they showed the jury and their slick as all hell get out. The fact that it was ruled you could copyright declarations kinda sucked too. Oracle now has an uphill fight on their hands.
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That's a no true scottsman, straight up!
It begs the question, that if the jury finds against Oracle, the jury is defacto unreasonable!
Why even HAVE a jury?!
No, the assertion is a logical fallacy, and a classic one at that. Oracle needs to define, explicitly, why it feels the instructions to the jury that has already decided the fact of the case that has now concluded were in any way improper.
That it cannot find one, and has to resort to "But, the verdict is unreasonable! I demand the other verdict!" as its justification, indicates that oracle does not have grounds for appeal.
Logical fallacies of international renown like this do not belong in the decision matrix of the legal system. Period.
Microsoft's move to open source,and set free some very powerful programming tools, carries well into this story. Developers choose Java because it was believed to be free/open But as far as Oracle is concerned, it's not. I really do think .net core can fill this role now.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Larry Ellison is a selfish hypocritical right wing fuck who was willing to wreck the entire software industry for his own personal gain.
Dude, chill. I think you're going overboard with this.
Oracle has to defend its business and it would be stupid for them not to go after the ginormous megacorp Google if they didn't see a chance of making a PR splash with the public and the shareholders. Everyone knows this was not about some silly and absurd 9 billion in damages Oracle was asking of Google.
Now Ellison can point to the lost Google case when business goes south for Oracle and Google wins out - even though this all had nothing to to with the case. The lawsuit is little more than a machiavellian smoke & mirror stunt to give Oracle some extra arguments vis-a-vis their inverstors. The case does have a lot of SCO smell to it and it was Sun who FOSSed Java, for the better or the worse - I doubt the Oracle experts or their legal dept. saw much of a chance of winning.
That's my impression anyway.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca