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Oracle Will Officially Appeal Its 'Fair Use' Loss Against Google (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The massive Oracle v. Google litigation has entered a new phase, as Oracle filed papers (PDF) yesterday saying it will appeal its loss on "fair use" grounds to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. For a brief recap of the case: after Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems and acquired the rights to Java, it sued Google in 2010, saying that Google infringed copyrights and patents related to Java. The case went to trial in 2012. Oracle initially lost but had part of its case revived on appeal. The sole issue in the second trial was whether Google infringed the APIs in Java, which the appeals court held are copyrighted. In May, a jury found in Google's favor after a second trial, stating that Google's use of the APIs was protected by "fair use." Oracle's appeal is no surprise, but it will be a long shot. The four-factor "fair use" test is a fairly subjective one, and Oracle lawyers will have to argue that the jury's unanimous finding must be overturned. There are various ways a jury could arrive at the conclusion that Google was protected by fair use. The case will go back to the Federal Circuit, the same appeals court that decided APIs could be copyrighted in the first place. That decision overruled U.S. District Judge William Alsup, the lower court judge, and was extremely controversial in the developer community. However, the same decision that insisted APIs can be copyrighted clearly held the door open to the idea that "fair use" might apply. Unless Oracle pulls off a stunning move on appeal, its massive legal expenditures in this case will be for naught.
There must be Oracle employees who actively post here at /..
What do you think of this? What should the rest of us think of you and your employer?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
... is that I saw this all coming the moment Google announced they would use Java for Android. It was clearly obvious to me (and I assume anyone else actually paying attention) that Oracle had "open sourced" Java (without really open sourcing it) specifically as a patent litigation trap for such big companies as Google. Of course, Google doesn't like being told what to do so they called Oracle's bluff.
One or both of these companies is going to find out they've made a huge mistake. Either way, we all lose. Java always sucked, and, I feel, as evidenced by this, has primarily been used for evil rather than innovation.
Maybe we could call it "The Darl". Oracle is winning this year's Darl award.
Do you have ESP?
...that Oracle is the Donald Trump of the computer world.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Of course, considering that Google only cribbed the API, and not the code implementing it, there's really only one main benefit they get from Java's API - one that nothing else delivers: Java developers.
Yes, they could clone another language library, but few languages have the popularity of Java, and C++ doesn't have a standard library with anywhere near the scope of Java's, even if they could entice "close to the metal" developers to write code for their emulator instead.
And for most languages I suspect the APIs are no more unencumbered than Java's, so there would be nothing to gain anyway.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Given corporations have legal personhood, the expression is valid.
If it is a movie reference, which one were you going for, because matrix is "the oracle" and my brain isn't coming up with any others because it's friday afternoon here.
The acronym "Oracle" expands to "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison".
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
They should just clone python. It's developer base is not *that* far behind java, it is a much nicer language to code in and because the original language is under the LGPL there is no risk of being sued for an alternative implementation (indeed several alternative implementations already exist - ironpython for example).
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Google DID rip Oracle off [...] and they should have to pay
Then how should interoperability with a platform implemented as copyrighted computer programs be achieved, other than through copying the interfaces needed to interoperate with other software developed for the platform? If you believe instead that one ought not to attempt to interoperate in the first place, then how does it benefit the public to give a platform's owner the power to chill interoperability through copyright law?