Judge In Oracle-Google Case Given Crash Course in Java 181
itwbennett writes "Lawyers for Oracle and Google gave Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco an overview of Java and why it was invented, and an explanation of terms such as bytecode, compiler, class library and machine-readable code. The tutorial was to prepare him for a claim construction conference in two weeks, where he'll have to sort out disputes between the two sides about how language in Oracle's Java patents should be interpreted. At one point an attorney for Google, Scott Weingaertner, described how a typical computer is made up of applications, an OS and the hardware underneath. 'I understand that much,' Alsup said, asking him to move on. But he had to ask several questions to grasp some aspects of Java, including the concept of Java class libraries. 'Coming into today's hearing, I couldn't understand what was meant by a class,' he admitted."
been before alsup before (Score:5, Informative)
Judge Alsup is a very interesting Judge. He is a complete hardass who doesn't take any crappy and wants things done exactly his way. Often he does this beyond what is probably fair, but he will hold the parties feet to the fire on what they do. He has had software cases before him before, and he definitely has the intellect to be able to handle this one. People who make off the cuff commentator about how dumb lawyers and/or judges are have never work with or against them in the context of high stakes litigation. Tutorials such as this one are more the norm than the exception in most patent litigation.
And that's the problem with IP law... (Score:4, Informative)
But when you have no clue about what software development is, then how on earth would you be able to judge trials about it fairly?
That is the problem with IP laws on technology: there are very, very few people with the combination of legal knowledge and technical knowledge needed to enforce them sensibly (and, in the case of patents, a lack of Renaissance Men with the required level of omniscience to make the hair-thin but crucial judgements about obviousness etc.*). Solution: don't pass laws that are impossible to enforce fairly (don't hold your breath).
(Does anybody know if Einstein was any good as a patent officer? "Sorry sir, what was that about claim 137b? I was daydreaming about riding on a beam of light...")
Re:Oracle made a big mistake (Score:5, Informative)
And I did really not cheer when Sun shut it down. What Microsoft did was to identify a real world problem where Java really missed some features(And java still miss this. Writing gui code in java is still painfull due to missing delegates/function pointers).
What sun should have done was to realize that Microsoft did find a giant feature hole in java. So sun should have changed java to add the features which Microsoft needed (And the rest of the gui developing world) missed.
Re:Oracle made a big mistake (Score:5, Informative)
You know, despite all the "Oracle boo, Google yay" fanboyism we see here at /. I still haven't heard anybody give a reasonable answer as to why this isn't the exact same as the MS Java mess which everyone was cheering when Sun shut it down?
Because Google never claimed Android or Dalvik was compatible with Java, and hasn't used the term Java except in context of the language both VMs share. Indeed they take great pains in technical documentation to explain how Dalvik is not the same as Java and incompatible.
Microsoft basically tried to co-opt the Java brand, the trademark & logo, extended the system in some ways (delegates, CAB files) and omitting other parts (JNI, Jar files etc.) and palmed it off as Java / J++ even though it was not compatible.