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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."

13 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 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.

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

    And take studious notes.

  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 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. 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.

    --
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  8. 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.

  9. 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. . . .