Google to pay $0 in damages to Oracle

In what might have been the shortest hearing yet, legal teams from Google and Oracle met on Monday at the US District Court to clean up unresolved financial issues surrounding their case.

There were three major points that were discussed and finalised during the 25-minute session.

First, Oracle filed a stipulation earlier in the day in which Google has been asked to pay $0 in statutory damages (in reference to nine lines of code in the "rangeCheck" method and test files). Oracle has done this to move proceedings along faster, as it works on an appeal. Judge William Alsup asked Oracle's lawyers if there was a catch here. There isn’t, really, except that the damages can be discussed again down the line, if Oracle wins an appeal.

Secondly, Google has 14 days to submit an application for Oracle to pay legal administrative costs. It's possible that Google could also demand that Oracle pay for legal fees (eg. billable hours for attorneys) too, but that will be revealed in the application.

Finally, while there were no damages phase at all, throughout this trial, there were lawyers hired by both sides to determine how much this case was worth, overall. Payments for the attorneys hired by Oracle and Google, have both been finalised, while the court had another attorney on retainer, who analysed the worth of the case from an objective standpoint, for free.

Again, the next item will be Google's application for legal cost reimbursement from Oracle.

Judge William Alsup acknowledged to the court that he didn't know when he might see everyone involved in this case again. However, Oracle's lead attorney from Morrison and Foerster, Michael Jacobs, said he hopes it will happen after the appeal.

Via ZDNet US