Does Google’s Android smartphone and tablet operating system violate Oracle’s patents? Who knows. I’m no software patent lawyer, but I cover intellectual property (IP) lawsuits far too often and I expect it will be years before the courts decide, or, as is more likely Google and Oracle will come to a licensing agreement. But, now one attorney is claiming a much more clear-cut IP law violation: Android violates Linux’s copyrights.
Edward J. Naughton, an IP attorney and partner at the international law firm Brown Rudnick, building on the work of Ray Nimmer, a copyright law professor at the University of Houston Law Center, claimed that when Google built Android around Linux and its GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), that “a key component of Android–the Bionic Library [which] is used by all application developers who need to access the core functions of the Linux operating system. Google essentially copied hundreds of files of Linux code that were never meant to be used as is by application developers, ‘cleaned’ those files using a non-standard and questionable technical process, and then declared that the code was no longer subject to the GPLv2, so that developers could use it without becoming subject to copyleft effect that would normally apply to GPLv2-licensed code taken from the Linux kernel.”
Thus, Naughton stated, “I have serious doubts that Google’s approach to the Bionic Library works under U.S. copyright law. At a minimum, Google has taken a significant gamble. While that may be fine for Google, because it knows about and understands the risks, many Android developers and device manufacturers are taking that same risk unknowingly. If Google is wrong, the repercussions are significant for the Android ecosystem: the manufacturers and developers working with Android would be incorporating GPLv2-licensed code into applications and components and taking on the copyleft obligations of that license.”
He concluded, “What is potentially even more interesting is what happens if Google is right. If that is the case, Google has found a way to take Linux away from the open source community and privatize it. Perhaps the community believes it can rely on Google to “do no evil” with that kind of power, but can it rely on others to be so magnanimous?” Naughton furthers his argument in a more detailed legal analysis of Android’s Bionic library (PDF Link).
