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Topic: Oracle

Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

Summary: Oracle was granted at least one of its wishes in its patent infringement suit with Google. The two will go to trial this October. However, Google was given a little room to wiggle.

Rachel King

By for Between the Lines |

Oracle was granted at least one of its wishes in its patent infringement suit with Google. The two will go to trial this October. However, Google was given a little room to wiggle.

On Thursday, both legal teams for the Silicon Valley giants continued to present their arguments at the United States Courthouse in San Francisco. However, all they received was a couple of stern lectures from Judge William H. Alsup without any answer to the joint motion filed earlier this week.

However, Alsup did promise an answer about where the proceedings would go next, and that answer is here.

Florian Mueller reports that the trial is still set for this Halloween (Monday, October 31). Before then, Oracle has been instructed to revamp its damages report, which is in serious need of help given that Oracle has failed to specifically cite patent licenses that it argues were infringed upon.

Mueller writes:

Even though Oracle is likely to arrive at a fairly high damages amount in its damages report 2.0, I believe it's an uphill battle now for the primary Java rights holder to derive a multi-billion dollar amount out of this litigation just based on damages. Instead, the profitability of this for Oracle may now depend mostly on the question of whether or not the court grants an injunction, which is increasingly a possibility given what the judge said at a hearing on Thursday. With an injunction, Oracle would have the leverage to negotiate with Google a license deal that could result in a very high per-unit royalty.

That report will be due 35 days before the pre-trial conference.

As for Google, the judge conceded to Google's Daubert motion, which would exclude a damages report and the related testimony of its author before a jury. That's especially helpful to Google as a new email authored by Google's senior VP of mobile Andy Rubin has surfaced talking about doing Java anyway and making enemies along the way.

Nevertheless, it's generally agreed upon that if Google doesn't come up with something astounding quickly, it's going to be in serious trouble.

More coverage about Google vs. Oracle:

Topics: Oracle, Google

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  • RE: Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

    Read it wrong buddy. Oracle's damage report was thrown out and now Oracle has to redo it. If they can't reduce the size of their claim, Judge will order a stay:
    http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/
    tatiGmail
    Reply Vote

    • Since when is "fix this and that" throwing out something?

      @tatiGmail I love it when fanboys make completely stupid statements that totally ignore facts.

      Guess what? Being told by a Judge that you must show more is not throwing anything out. Oracles still gets to present 100% of what they already claimed and more. The Judge is just saying, SHOW ME MORE. Nothing else.
      wackoae
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

        @wackoae
        Oracle gets to present 100 percent plus of what they already presented even if PTO has rejected the claims of four of the seven patents, How does that work?

        Yet as stated in article: Oracle has failed to specifically cite patent licenses that it argues were infringed upon.
        daikon
        Reply Vote

      • Sure ... because the Judge must be the same as the PTO

        @daikon ... and agreeing to review 4 pattens is the same as rejecting them.
        wackoae
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

        @wackoae
        wrong, the judge told Oracle show me something else that's credible, not junk theories!
        Linux Geek
        Reply Vote

      • HaHaHa.....

        @wackoae

        More like show me something in terms of actual patents. Oh how I hope this ends well for Google and life can move on.

        ps I'm no fanboi and I have ipad, iphone, HTC, Blackberry Torch and Asus transformer. I love the battery life of my torch; love some of my wifi apps on Android, and love plopping films on asus pad via SD. uSD, USB, and mini HDMI out. These are serious reasons for wanting Android success, whilst not stopping others from enjoying IOS. It's a shame most Apple users I come across are so idiotic, and want anything non Apple to be destroyed.
        johnmckay
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

        @wackoae wrong, the judge told Oracle show me something else that's credible
        <a href="http://www.lyricsfreebee.com">Lyrics Free</a> <a href="http://www.urban-djs.net">DJ agency</a>
        mrswilliamson
        Reply Vote

    • RE: Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

      @tatiGmail Dude, they do not care about facts when they can get some made up Lawyer to try p up a good story for them! This is Zdnet where facts are non-essential!
      slickjim
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

        @Peter Perry
        Nope this is zdnet were you troll the hardest. I think you really need to start playing with the boys over at engadget.
        illwill112
        Reply Vote

    • Message has been deleted.

      Linux Geek
      Reply Vote

  • Don't miss the forest for the trees

    I've been critical of Oracle's damages claims. I think they have done a poor job of actually identifying 'value' for their patents.

    With that being said, Oracle remains in a strong position. It is increasingly clear that not only did Google violate Oracle's patents, they were aware that they were violating them, and willingly chose to do so and continue to do so. The fact that Google was willing to take such a risk seems to strike at the essential nature of these patents for Android (there does not appear to be a viable work around strategy). If this is the case, regardless of how much in damages Oracle forces Google to hand over (punitive damages seem to be a distinct possibility) an injunction on using Oracle's code is likely to be the result.

    Google would likely then be forced to stop distributing Android without first licensing it from Oracle (or remove all Java code in question) and handset manufacturers would also be at risk (Google would likely have to strike a deal with Oracle to cover handset manufacturers that used 'official' Google code - Amazon and B&N would as well).

    The overall flow of this case remains in Oracle's favor. There are things that Oracle needs to correct but I see no reason for Oracle to settle this case. If Oracle is successful, it will become one of the biggest players in the mobile market.
    retnep
    Reply Vote

    • Google was negotiating a license with Sun

      @retnep Google spent a lot of time in negotiation with Sun. That fact alone shows that they knew they were about to violate patents. But instead and as usual they decided not to play by the rules, put $100K in an escrow account and willingly chose to steal and copy Sun's IP and technology.<br><br>The funny part is that they think that by saying Sun wanted to license at $100K would exonerate them from the violation. Also, it is hilarious that anybody can claim that creating a script that automatically erases and replaces a license header out of source code is just an error, when in fact that races the question of how many other source they stole and replace the headers to hide the fact that they didn't own them.
      wackoae
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

        @wackoae

        "willingly chose to steal and copy Sun's IP and technology" is unclear and not factually proven, just a wish you have. The damages Oracle originally wanted have to be resubmitted at a lower value, which is a minor strike against Oracle. If the case is stayed pending patent examination that works against Oracle as well since some of the patents Oracle has have been given non-final rejection notices from the USPTO. The situation is not automatically in Oracle's favor when the facts are examined as they have their work cut out for them. Google is full of smart people, but they do some foolish things like support censorship in China...and Google Buzz was a terrible initial release.
        DonRupertBitByte
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

        @DonRupertBitByte

        "The damages Oracle originally wanted have to be resubmitted at a lower value"

        Not a completely accurate statement. The method that the Oracle's expert used to calculate damages was rejected. Using that method, Oracle might have to lower its damage claims. However, Oracle can use a different method to calculate damages that actually may be higher.

        While I agree that Oracle has its work cut out for them (in terms of time, effort, energy, these cases are intense..100+hr work weeks), Oracle does seem to have the facts in its favor.
        retnep
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

        @wackoae
        And, there is still the issues that Sun released its Java code to GPL in 2007. That will be a big obstacle for Oracle in proving it's case.
        linux for me
        Reply Vote

      • For an OSS user, you sure are ignorant about the GPL

        @linux for me

        #1- Sun did not released Java as GPL ... they released SOME of J2SE (not all) source as GLP. Also, the mobile part of Java (J2ME) and most of the J2EE are still proprietary and fully covered by patents.<br>#2- The GPL REQUIRES that if you embed GPL code in your application, your application must be licensed under GPL. Google violated that requirement in two ways: by licensing under Apache and by removing the original licensing headers. When they violated the license, they legally lost the right to use it.
        wackoae
        Reply Vote

      • Strange kind of stealing...

        @wackoae
        Looks like Jonathan Schwartz had no problem with Android after all. This article is dated Nov 5th 2007:

        http://web.archive.org/web/20101023072550/http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/congratulations_google
        Zogg
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

        @wackoae
        the damages must be capped at 100k since Sun was ready to license java to google for that amount.
        Linux Geek
        Reply Vote

    • RE: Oracle gets its trial date with Google this Halloween

      @retnep Besides, Google have another big problem: Harmony is a dead project now (no activity for now 6 months), and I don't think that Google have the bandwidth to continue the project by themselves only without the help of all others, including IBM. Their only option really is to ask for Oracle help (technically), and I think they know it.
      atari_z
      Reply Vote

      • You are right

        @atari_z Looking at the official Harmony website, it looks like the project was abandoned and no changes have being made since September 2010. The statistics on bug reports haven't being updated since July 2009 and from the CM history it looks like this year only 3 source updates were made by somebody but they aren't approved yet.
        wackoae
        Reply Vote
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