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Judge grills Google over whether it knew it was infringing Oracle's patents
THE JUDGE in the Oracle lawsuit has grilled Google over the possibility that it knew it was infringing Java patents in its Android operating system.
US District Court Judge William Alsup sent a list of questions to the internet search giant, strongly insinuating that Google was well aware that it was infringing the patents owned by Sun Microsystems, which were subsequently acquired by Oracle when it bought Sun in 2009.
In a notice regarding additional questions for the next hearing, Alsup said that it "appears possible that early on Google recognised that it would infringe patents protecting at least part of Java."
He said that while reading the Daubert briefing, a move by Google to have Oracle's damages expert dismissed, it seemed that Google entered negotiations with Sun, but abandoned them when the licence became too expensive, ultimately making Android without any licence from Sun.
He asked how accurate this proposed scenario was, and if Google acknowledges that Android infringes some of the patent claims, how this should affect the analysis of damages, and how this should affect the issues of willfulness and equitable relief.
This does not bode well for Google, as it adds the element of willful intent to the case, which means Google could face substantially heavier damages if found liable for patent infringement. Indeed, Oracle has asked for triple damages because of Google's alleged knowledge of infringement.
Oracle sued Google in August 2010 for infringing a number of its Java patents. Google does not make money directly from Android, but rather through its advertising business model, and Oracle wants a substantial slice of that pie, settling on a damages cap of $2.6bn.
Alsup said that legal counsels should be prepared to answer these questions at the hearing next week on 21 July, which could prove to be a decisive date in how the case goes for Google. µ
Tags: Google
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Google is planning a $12bn acquisition of a cell phone company. Google may have stolen code and knowingly violated patents. Oracle is seeking $2.6bn dollars. If Google did the crime I have no problem with them being made to pay, and this is an amount they can afford it. This is going to crush Google or Android.
They used Dalvik because they thought it was a way to avoid just this type of scenario, not because of ANY technical reason. They now have a big problem, because they can't do without Oracle. The Harmony project is now dead, and they don't have the resources to develop it for themselves, so they can do only one thing at the end and they know it well: negociate with Oracle. GFurthermore, nobody will come to their defence, nor IBM, no Apple. They are alone here.
Dalvik has NO compatibility with JVM whatsoever. It runs a completely different, much more compact bytecode. The virtual machine architecture is register-based, not stack-based. In short, it is purpose-built for modern, high-performance, lower-power architectures, not for legacy systems from the 1990s.
I don’t see how JVM could ever have been a serious possibility for Android.
They failed to reach terms with Sun to work with JVM, so they skipped out and clean roomed Dalvik instead. That's my understanding anyway. We won't know for sure until Google answers the question.
Didn't Google create a workaround of the patents in question by implementing a clean-room with Dalvik?
google should've learned from MS in the 90s that nothing good could come from supporting Sun technologies (especially endorsing Java)
I don't know why the hell Google needs Java.
Heck, I don't know why ANYONE would need it.