Oracle Tells Supreme Court Google Copyright Breach Knocked It Out Of Smartphone Market (crn.com)

Joseph Tsidulko, writing for CRN: Oracle asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to not review an appellate court's decision finding Google violated Oracle's copyright of the Java platform when building the Android mobile operating system. In that opposition brief, Oracle's attorneys said Google's copyright violation shut Oracle, the Java platform owner, out of the emerging smartphone market, causing incalculable harm to its business. The complex case pitting two Silicon Valley giants against each other has raged on since 2010, and already saw many twists in turns before a circuit court last year reversed a jury decision in favor of Oracle. That prompted Google's appeal to the nation's highest court. Oracle notes Google had previously asked for a writ of certiorari -- the legal term for review by the high court -- in 2015 without success in an earlier phase of the case, and the company argues nothing has changed in the time since.

Oracle believes Google destroyed its hopes of competing as a smartphone platform developer with the Java platform, which enables development and execution of software written in Java, including through APIs that access a vast software library. The lawsuit alleged Google copied those APIs without a proper license. Java was developed at Sun Microsystems, which Oracle acquired in 2010. "Google's theory is that, having invested all those resources to create a program popular with platform developers and app programmers alike, Oracle should be required to let a competitor copy its code so that it can coopt the fan base to create its own best-selling sequel," Oracle's brief states.

Comments

Re:Wow

[MightyMartian]

I'm fascinated to hear what products Oracle had in the works that Google wrecked by re-using Java library headers.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Tablizer]

Who do I root for?

Oracle is trying to trick the courts into allowing the copyrighting of interfaces. Before it was mostly limited implementation. Thus, Oracle is potentially doing more damage to the legal system.

Re:When evil battles evil

[green1]

Well, you could maybe look at what the argument is, instead of who brought it forward. I know it's cool to hate on the big companies, and we all know it's well deserved, but who the players are should not affect the merit, or lack thereof, of any particular argument.

In this particular case, you root for Google. Not because Google is in any way "good" or "not evil", but because Oracle is trying to ensure that no company can ever make anything interoperable with another company's stuff ever again. There is no accusation that Google copied code, only that they re-implemented the API. A strict interpretation in favour of Oracle would mean that you could never use anyone's API to interface with them without violating their copyright (or paying royalties, etc) This would be a very dangerous precedent.

Re:Wow

[DarkOx]

Well while I don't agree with Orcacle's theory that interfaces can be subject to copyright. I would agree with the assessment Google by creating their own JVM essentially drove Oracle out of the mobile market place. J2ME Was pretty widely used in what we think of as the pre-smartphone era.

I don't see any reason why it would not have become the defacto application platform going forward, except for entrants like Google with resources enough to implement their own JVA not wanting to pay Oracle for theirs.

Remember when blamer said "developers..developers..developers.." same thing applies here its not like Google chose Java as their implementation language for Android because the syntax is so sexy and everyone love it. They picked it because a lot of people know it. J2ME would have probably continued as a force without Davlik and just got some sexy new interface libraries to bring all the existing mobile phone developers and desktop java developers over.

Re:Wow

[bill_mcgonigle]

J2ME's UI options and system services were terrible for mobile.

Android, for all its warts, was substantially better. Java just happened to be a decent language for the time that could be hooked into the Android stack.

If it had been Swift or Python or Ruby it still would have pantsed any J2ME phone offering. Java isn't all that special. Look at iPhone - lots of people learned Objective-C just to use its mobile stack and in that case Apple itself showed how non-optimal a language that is by developing Swift.

Oracle is attempting to mislead the Court.

Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle's argument is: I couldn't go to the party because Google was already there wearing the dress I wanted to wear?

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, "most popular language for mobile apps" is misleading. C was the most popular language for mobile code.

But C didn't have sandboxing capabilities, etc. Fault isolation and data protection in native code relies on a memory protection unit, which was too complex/expensive to be included in dumb phone processors.

So downloadable "apps" mostly used Java which had some inherent security features based in a mandatory type-safety system.

But "smartphones" have always had better hardware, and in particular they've had MPUs, so there was no reason to use (slow, bloated) Java except for portability. And in the early days of smartphones there were only 3 or 4 processor architectures in use, and any OS that had more than one had enough smarts built into the app deployment systems (for example, ActiveSync for WinCE) to pick the right binary for the phone.

So Java never had a foothold on honest-to-God smartphones before Google introduced Dalvik and Android -- only on feature phones. So you may be able to make the statement true by adding enough qualifiers -- "the most popular language for MMS-downloadable applets on feature phones" -- but that was a doomed niche.

Re:Wow

[DarkOx]

Did I say it was? Oracle is not entitled to the mobile market. Like you I disagree with the premise that interfaces can be subject to copyright. If the court however finds otherwise; than damages will have to be figured. If we are forced to presume by the courts finding that interfaces can be copyright; than all I am saying is Oracles argument that Google cost them the mobile space probably does follow, and Google will in that instance be required to pay dearly.

Thank you!

[AVryhof]

We should make Google a Thank You card for keeping Oracle out of the Smartphone market.

Oracle purchased a poorly managed technology, JAVA

[Locutus]

When Google came on board with Dalvick, Sun was having a grand time putting JAVA in the browser and on the server. Those wanting to put it into embedded devices, it's original intent, were ignored by Sun Microsystems. As HP about that since they wanted to license JAVA for use in their printers but Sun would not address their requests for licensing. HP had to do a clean-room implementation which they called Chai or something like that( as in the tea ). No doubt there were many others since we all know HP is no small printer manufacturer and landing them would have been a large deal.

But somehow we are to expect, or the judges are, that it was all Google's fault? Java on mobile phones, back when phones were not very smart, was a mess with many different layers of API's to follow. I forget what they called that mobile version of JAVA but each phone vendor had different application stores and different application requirements.

Apple showed that the market for downloading applications on mobile devices was viable again( remember Palm did it years before ) and Google just followed their lead. Had the phone vendors considered their Sun JAVA mobile API's sufficient they could have competed but they were stuck with what Sun provided and it was not really so good for the rich smartphone OS which was becoming the norm.

Oracle purchased Sun thinking they'd leverage JAVA everywhere but Sun left the mobile market and focused on the server side and browser...

LoB

Re: When evil battles evil

[green1]

Unfortunately the legal precedent wouldn't be just for Java. It would be for all APIs for every piece of software ever written.

You may not like Java, and that's perfectly fair, but that's not a reason to root for Oracle in this case.

Re:API... not code

[jabuzz]

Don't worry IBM are quietly rubbing their hands in glee. Should Oracle succeed, they should expect to find themselves in court for ripping off IBM's SEQUEL back when they where Relational Software. It's a bit of a silly game for Oracle to play IMHO.

What stopped Oracle forking Android?

[presidenteloco]

and taking "back" control of the mobile platform.
Maybe it would have had to rebrand it. e.g. Orafix, Mava (mobile java),..., what have you.

Nothing stopped Oracle from pulling a CyanogenMod move, but backed by Oracle's money.

Nothing except lack of willpower, imagination, and skill.

Re: FALSE

[Dragonslicer]

Minor correction, can be copyrighted. Not every API that comes into existence automatically becomes copyrighted unless the author says so and even then if they only enforce it.

Your correction is incorrect, at least in the United States. Creative works are automatically protected by copyright from the time they are created; no additional action by the author is necessary. Unlike trademarks, copyright (as well as patent) protection is not lost for failure to actively defend it.