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Oracle Refuses To Accept Android's 'Fair Use' Verdict, Files Appeal (wsj.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the try-try-again dept.

An anonymous reader quotes the Wall Street Journal: The seven-year legal battle between tech giants Google and Oracle just got new life. Oracle on Friday filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that seeks to overturn a federal jury's decision last year... The case has now gone through two federal trials and bounced around at appeals courts, including a brief stop at the U.S. Supreme Court. Oracle has sought as much as $9 billion in the case.

In the trial last year in San Francisco, the jury ruled Google's use of 11,000 lines of Java code was allowed under "fair use" provisions in federal copyright law. In Oracle's 155-page appeal on Friday, it called Google's "copying...classic unfair use" and said "Google reaped billions of dollars while leaving Oracle's Java business in tatters."
Oracle's brief also argues that "When a plagiarist takes the most recognizable portions of a novel and adapts them into a film, the plagiarist commits the 'classic' unfair use."

26 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Boycott the fuckers! Do not use Java.

    1. Re:Simple by ClickOnThis · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Boycott the fuckers! Do not use Java.

      I use Java all the time, and I don't send a dime to Oracle. How is not using Java going to hurt them?

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    2. Re:Simple by ClickOnThis · · Score: 2

      That's why I was asking. My question stands: how does not using Java hurt Oracle?

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    3. Re:Simple by saloomy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      By not using java you hurt Oracle in two ways.

      1st. You learn something else. This means their technology gets a lower market share, and less development mindshare. You learn something else (or become more fluent in other languages). This ,means they have a less compelling product to sell that is slightly less a case of "everyone knows Java". This is especially true when it comes to new developers. When you go to get a job in enterprise, using something else means Java won't be their pic for licensing.

      2nd. The language gets less use and therefore less bugs are discovered, less optimization as real-world issues get passed back to the developers. Using Java less means Oracle has a less valuable language.

    4. Re:Simple by Bradac_55 · · Score: 2

      Yea demeaning others is the correct way to get anyone to read your irrelevant and wrong opinion.

  2. Ellison needs to read a copy of Moby Dick by JoeyRox · · Score: 4, Funny

    And take studious notes.

    1. Re:Ellison needs to read a copy of Moby Dick by hackwrench · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Ellison logic: Cliffs' notes is classical unfair use.

  3. Java sucks by backslashdot · · Score: 4, Informative

    Use some other language. There are better languages out there.
    Sun, which developed Java, made it freely available so that it would get popular. That's why people chose it -- that's why it got the traction and support to evolve to where it is today. Ultimately though, people were only willing to pay what it was worth.

    1. Re:Java sucks by geek · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Use some other language. There are better languages out there.
      Sun, which developed Java, made it freely available so that it would get popular. That's why people chose it -- that's why it got the traction and support to evolve to where it is today. Ultimately though, people were only willing to pay what it was worth.

      Her'es the thing with Java. It was designed for much different use than it's being used for today. It was meant to run on smart cards and specialized hardware. That's why it uses a JVM because you can port the JVM to whatever you want and the language will just work. But those uses today are no longer important. Java has ended up as a backend server language for some odd fucking reason where its performance is terrible and the constant revisions has made it impossible to maintain.

      Java today is a pointless language used only because other people are using it. There are so many better options that choosing java for a project today should be a fireable offence. Pick anything, C, Rust, Go, C#, ANYTHING. It will be better than Java.

    2. Re: Java sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You are an idiot and obviously pro-ms.
      C (and C++) run on more servers than you
      can imagine. Way, way more than any
      other language. Way more.

    3. Re:Java sucks by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was designed for much different use than it's being used for today

      Java, originally Green, was part of the 7* project at Sun. 7* was a portable, hand-held computer and Green was created as the language for programming it - particularly for programming the GUI applications. That doesn't sound to me too far away from Android's use of Java to me...

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    4. Re:Java sucks by jfdavis668 · · Score: 2

      Projects written in every language will turn into something impossible to maintain over time. I have maintained old systems in many languages. They all become crap. People take short cuts all the time to solve some short term issue, which causes major problems down the road. No one wants to pay to rewrite crap code later, since they invested big bucks in creating it in the first place. Some "latest and greatest" language comes along, and everyone jumps on the bandwagon. The next one comes, and everyone jumps ship. The old system is now maintained by other people who can't understand why the original people wrote such a mess. I have had to repair ridiculous code in so many different languages its just beyond belief. I hear so many people say "this is the greatest language, lets us it". They are just choosing the language that they know well, not always the one that best fits the requirement. Most of the code ever written is just a pile of crap jammed together until it works.

    5. Re:Java sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Green was the platform; Oak was the language that became Java.

    6. Re:Java sucks by Tough+Love · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Java today is a pointless language used only because other people are using it.

      That would be wishful thinking. Java is picked for new projects for the same reasons as always: you don't need to be a genius to master it and it does provide the software engineering features necessary for large scale projects, however clumsy they may be. You would be certifiably nuts to pick C for anything at enterprise scale. That would be a firing offense. Rust looks promising but unproven, maybe it will be a conservative pick five years from now. C# and Go requiring buying into, respectively, Microsoft's and Google's ecosystems. There is no reason to think that Microsoft intends to play the intellectual property game any nicer than Oracle does. Go is immature and has been crticized for lack of extensibility. Python is a viable choice for many projects, though it continues to suffer from inattention to performance and threading issues and idiosyncratic warts such as significant whitespace. Javascript is a horribly flawed language with huge support, mature JIT optimization, and a broad talent pool that make it a viable choice particularly for frontend work. As of today, there is no alternative that deals a knockout punch to Java, however much we wish there were.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    7. Re: Java sucks by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2

      As a kernel, yes.
      As 'systemd' or what ever system to use to initialize services, yes.
      As a 'bash', yes.
      As an 'Apache', yes.
      As an mysql or Oracle data base, yes.

      As the software that actually is making the money for the company running said server, no.

      Commercial big scale 'systems' run on Java, Python and in rare cases even on PHP.
      No one is writing back end software in C or C++, why would they? Productivity is less than 10% of that in Java or Python.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  4. Never ever by geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ever use Oracle for anything. Ever

    1. Re:Never ever by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ever use Oracle for anything. Ever

      You don't use Oracle . . . Oracle uses you. That's their business model.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  5. Not plagarism by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oracle's brief also argues that "When a plagiarist takes the most recognizable portions of a novel and adapts them into a film, the plagiarist commits the 'classic' unfair use."

    All that goes out the window when the novel's author openly tells everyone to use the novel without charge, which they do. Then the author dies and the person who buys the rights to the author's estate unilaterally decides it can undo what the author did in the past and tries to charge back-royalties for past use.

    A more fitting description here would be "bait and switch."

  6. Re:he's right by suutar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    well, if interfaces aren't fair use, the entire software industry is screwed.

  7. A bad sign for Oracle futures? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The story at the time was that Oracle only paid so much for Sun because it thought that by hammering on Google for Android with Java licensing claims it could force Google into a patent cross-licensing deal for its distributed database patents, which Oracle needed to scale.

    Does this mean, then, that Oracle is still having trouble scaling? It suggests to me that Oracle would be a bad choice at this point for web-scale development. I honestly would have predicted that they would have their own solutions in place by now.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  8. Re:Sorry, but, by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wasn't Java open source at some point? And besides why is anybody using it now? (Here's looking at you Libre/OpenOffice) Rewrite Android in C, or better, Assembly, and the problem is solved.

    Wikipedia's entry, has this to say as intro:

    OpenJDK (Open Java Development Kit) is a free and open source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE).[1] It is the result of an effort Sun Microsystems began in 2006. The implementation is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) version 2 with a linking exception. Were it not for the GPL linking exception, components that linked to the Java class library would be subject to the terms of the GPL license. OpenJDK is the official reference implementation of Java SE since version 7

    There is a post here on StackOverflow on this: http://stackoverflow.com/quest...

    My cynical side feels whatever the reality is, this is Oracle and well lets just say that I haven't ever felt Oracle to be a community player, unless that involves providing consults at cost.

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  9. Re:he's right by jabuzz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Better yet IBM are set to rack it in to the tune of many more billions if Oracle can get this ruling to stick. Think of all those lost DB2 sales from that SQL server copying IBM's language.

    Oracle should be careful what they wish for.

  10. Raises hand to ask ... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Informative

    Google reaped billions of dollars while leaving Oracle's Java business in tatters.

    What Oracle Java business? Or do they mean the one about trying to extort money from others using public APIs?

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  11. Oracle needs to look in the mirror by sir-gold · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In Oracle's 155-page appeal on Friday, it [...] said "Google reaped billions of dollars while leaving Oracle's Java business in tatters."

    It seems to me that it was Oracle that left Sun's Java business in tatters.

  12. Son of SCO by ytene · · Score: 3, Informative

    In many ways this case bears some remarkable similarities with the case brought by "The SCO Group" [a successor-in-interest, *not* the original Santa Cruz Operation company] against IBM, claiming not only that IBM had violated "TSG"-owned copyright, but that because in their view TSG owned the rights to code that IBM were alleged to have copied into Linux, somehow this gave TSG the right to charge every Linux user a "license fee" for the use of this unspecified code.

    The exact same greed lies behind the Oracle case against Google. No matter how ludicrous the case might seem to us as technologists, the plaintiff in this case [Oracle], with their dying business model, is asking a court to allow them to charge a "tax" on every Android device in the same way that The SCO Group sought to tax every user of the Linux kernel.

    To be fair, there are some important distinctions between the two cases. In TSG vs. IBM, the plaintiff flat-out refused to identify [let alone with the specificity requested by IBM] the actual code they were alleged to have copied. In their hope of getting in front of a jury and having their star lawyer [David Boies] pull some fast talking, TSG refused to specifying, saying basically, "The infringing code is in the Linux Kernel. Go look for yourselves..." With Oracle vs. Google, the "code" is precisely identified.

    However, *unlike* the TSG case, Oracle are taking exception to Android's use of the "language structure" of JAVA, which of course Google did to ensure compatibility with existing applications. This is interesting because of the potential legal repercussions of this case and not just because this is two of the biggest names in US Technology duking it out in a court of law. Oracle are trying to argue that the structure of JAVA can be subject to copyright. To put that in context, that is like saying that a publisher could copyright a book structure that comprised of:-

    Chapter 1
    Chapter 2
    Chapter 3

    and so on... Lay the issue out in such a simple form and it seems a bit absurd, but we would do well to remember that "the law may upset reason, but reason may not upset the law..." (Ieyasu Tokugawa, the Shogun of Japan). This is both important and scary for us as technologists, because it means that if someone can convince a jury that they "own" a data model or data structure that might be self-evident to us, they might get the right to ask for damages sufficient to bring down not just companies, but entire industries.

    The funny-if-you-can-look-at-it-that-way observation to make is that Oracle are not the only company gunning for Android. Microsoft have already threatened multiple smart-phone manufacturers with patent infringements, claiming that some portion or other of Android violates some of their intellectual property. Unfortunately, deals struck in those cases always include a confidentiality clause, so we don't yet know what Microsoft have been using to extract their pound of flesh. But it does seem remarkable to me that Microsoft appear to have been more successful by attacking the hardware developers than attempting to go after Google, while Oracle have tried that and now lost multiple times.

    Let's hope that Oracle and not permitted get away with what looks for all the world like a shake-down...

  13. Re:leaving Oracle's Java business in tatters by mmell · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Libre Office forked before OpenOffice atrophied to uselessness.

    MySQL spawned several forks and somehow hasn't been destroyed by Oracle (don't ask me how).

    Solaris has been getting more and more useless since SUN ceased to exist. Now it's officially scheduled for execution.

    SPARC (SBus) architecture still exists, but only a crazy man would stake his professional reputation on recommending its use in the enterprise.

    JAVA started out as a noble idea - it wasn't really intended to be fast, or even for general purpose programming. It was intended to usher in the IoT.

    Oracle was a database. It still is - and despite the massive publicity, not always the best one for the job.