Google: No 'shred of evidence' Android team saw Sun's patents

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google's counsel followed up with its closing statements in phase two of its legal battle against Oracle at the U.S. District Court of Northern California on Tuesday morning.

See also: Oracle argues 'Google's reckless path to patent infringement'

Attorney Robert Van Nest delivered closing arguments on behalf of the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, starting off by reminding the jury that "this case is not about Java versus Android."

With that in mind, Van Nest outlined Google's three core points in its case:

• Google made "fundamentally different design choices for Android" without any specific knowledge of Sun Microsystems's patent portfolio
• Android's Dalvik Virtual Machine does not infringe U.S. Patent No. RE38,104
• Android's dx tool does not infringe U.S. Patent No. 6,061,520

"There isn't a shred of evidence that anyone at Google on the design team had seen these patents," Van Nest said, asserting that Oracle "admitted" that it didn't mention these specific patents to anyone at Google until the lawsuit was filed by Oracle back in July 2010.

Van Nest asserted that the '104 patent requires that symbolic references must be used in the instructions, backing up that "Android never uses symbolic references in the instructions, but rather numeric references."

Incidentally, one of the big debates that has emerged between experts testifying for both sides in phase two has been terminology, which could confuse and even sway the jury one way or another.

For example, on the '520 patent, Van Nest said that every expert witness acknowledged every step of the method has to be there, including simulation of the bytecode. He explained that Android doesn't implement simulated execution like Oracle argues, but rather "pattern matching."

In his closing arguments earlier in the morning, Oracle attorney Michael Jacobs defined a symbolic reference as “a reference that identifies data by a name other than the numeric memory of the location of data, and that is resolved dynamically rather than statically.”

Citing the testimony of Dr. David August, an associate professor of computer science at Princeton University who testified as an expert witness on behalf of Google, Van Nest recalled that August confirmed he looked at every implementation of the instructions, testifying "with certainty" that there aren't anything but numeric references in Dalvik's instructions.

Van Nest also brought up the testimony of Dr. John Mitchell, a professor of computer science at Stanford University and an expert witness for Oracle. Earlier, Jacobs has tried to defend Mitchell for making a "mistake" in his deposition video by testifying that indexes are numeric references, which would really favor Google's case and not Oracle's.

While Jacobs aimed to assure the jury that Mitchell corrected himself later, Van Nest countered by saying that it wasn't a mistake, and he has simply since "changed his opinion."

"I wouldn't criticize someone for making a single mistake, but these are not mistakes," Van Nest reiterated.

Related:

• Oracle-Google trial gets messier ahead of damages phase
• Oracle might only receive $150,000 in damages from Google
• Judge denies Oracle’s motion to throw out Google’s fair use claim
• Google points to Sun’s SEC filings to defend previous testimony
• Android chief called back in Oracle-Google trial to discuss patents