Posted on 08/13/2010 5:48:06 AM PDT by Mr. Blonde
Two Silicon Valley heavyweights are about to reenact the Java wars: this time, in a court room.
Oracle issued a press release late Thursday saying it has filed suit against Google for infringing on copyrights and patents related to Java, which Oracle acquired along with Sun Microsystems earlier this year. The terse release claimed Google "knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property."
A copy of the complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, says that "Android (including without limitation the Dalvik VM and the Android software development kit) and devices that operate Android infringe one or more claims of each of United States Patents Nos. 6,125,447; 6,192,476; 5,966,702; 7,426,720; RE38,104; 6,910,205; and 6,061,520."
A Google representative said the company had not yet been served with the lawsuit, and therefore couldn't comment until it had a chance to review it. An Oracle representative declined to comment beyond the complaint. Back when Google first announced plans to develop Android in 2007, it immediately raised the blood pressure of Java developers at Sun. Google's Java implementation is different than the one advocated by a Java standards group, which worried those tech industry veterans who remember the problems that Microsoft caused for Java by following a similar path on Windows.
Of course, Java has been forked and fragmented many times over the years, destroying the "write once run anywhere" promise of the technology with different implementations on different computing platforms. Still, Oracle, on behalf of Sun, is arguing that Java is a mobile operating system competitor against Android, and that Google is using Java-derived technologies without a proper license.
Oracle also noted the interlocking history between Google and Java in its complaint, noting that "Google has been aware of Sun's patent portfolio, including the patents at issue, since the middle of this decade, when Google hired certain former Sun Java engineers." Google CEO Eric Schmidt led the team that developed Java at Sun prior to becoming CEO of Novell, and later Google in 2001. Urs Hölzle, senior vice president of operations and a Google Fellow, also played a significant role in Java's development in the 1990s, and apparently other Sun engineers have joined Google in the intervening years.
tech list ping
Yeap you're probably right, patent-trolling.
Funny you write that, since Boies is representing Oracle too. I'm generally against pure software patents, believing that most of them are obvious to a "person having ordinary skill in the art." But I haven't looked at these specific patents.
However, the copyright claims would have merit unless Google can show a clean-room implementation. Given that Android code is openly published, I'd bet Oracle found their copyrighted code in it or they wouldn't have included this claim.
So I’ve read the complaint which gives me an idea of what the patents are. Most of them are pure software patents. There was a couple in there that MIGHT have hardware implications.
Other facts to consider. Sun created a patent “GRANT” for all clean-room implementations. So your comment about “Oracle” code being in Dalvik seems spot on. The other possibility that might give Oracle a leg up is whether Dalvik (the Java Runtime on my Android phone) has extensions to the Java Classes. This is something that the patent “GRANT” explicitly disallows.
Another angle that is in Google’s favor is that the pure software patents are going to be a soft spot in Oracle’s shield since pure software patents are now dubious under current patent law.
This one isn’t SCO part Deux though because Oracle has money. So it’s more a battle of giants. Likely it’ll come down to them exchanging some funds and cross licensing. That is how we usually resolve disputes like this in the valley made of silicone. ;-)
Did you see the recent news? James Gosling (father of Java) and others are saying that back at Sun they were told to patent as much as possible just to build a defensive patent portfolio, so they actually had a running joke of who could file the most absurd patent. One of Gosling’s patents is in the suit.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/why-software-patents-are-a-joke-literally/2039
Yep - I saw it this morning. Really seems nominal though. I’ve been living around these monsters for years (resident and worker in Silicon Valley.) Lawsuits/patent wars are part of the valley culture (not a good part!)
To expound a bit, when I claimed that they would likely eventually cross-license and someone would give the other guy some money, this ties into the having a big patent portfolio. Your best defense against a patent lawsuit is to find some patents of yours the other guy has violated. This gives you leverage in the negotiations.
After learning a little more about the Google way of dealing with Java...you can tell that Gosling doesn’t think much of it. I put this in the “He’s a purist” category. I think Google is doing what they need to to get the job done. If Gosling was RIGHT, Java ME would have succeeded. Note that Android IS succeeding. Obviously Oracle noticed anyway ;-)
Which makes it all the more interesting that he's trashing Sun's (thus now Oracle's) patents. You'd think he'd be a cheerleader against Google.
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