Oracle Thinks Google Owes $6.1 Billion In Damages 243
An anonymous reader writes "When Oracle acquired Sun in 2009, the company got its hands on a lot of desirable technology. While OpenOffice may have fallen by the wayside, Oracle isn't about to let the Java programming language and its associated patents remain untouched if they can generate some additional revenue. In fact, the company is currently in the middle of a legal battle with Google over those patents that could potentially net Oracle billions and leave Android crippled. In August last year Oracle sued Google for infringing Java patents and copyright by developing Android. Oracle argues that Android uses technology derived from Java and therefore infringes multiple patents. It wants compensation, but with most court documents and details not publicly available, it's hard to know specifics. However, new documents made available late last week revealed just how much Oracle thinks is an acceptable damages payment for Google to make. According to an expert Oracle hired, Google could be looking at a bill between $1.4 billion and $6.1 billion for its alleged infringements."
Compensation for Java? (Score:1, Insightful)
This is what Google gets for using Java (Score:2, Insightful)
C++ is looking pretty good right about now.
Re:New Google Strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
Fuck Ellison. I hope he gets run over by a fucking bus.
Re:New Google Strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you meant to say "controlling interest"? If say, a company is owned equally by five groups, each with 20% of the stock, you could control the company by acquiring 25% of the stock.
Of course owning 51% guarantees you controlling interest, but strictly speaking, it's not necessary
Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)
That just about sums it up. Oracle shouldn't be picking a fight with Google; they should be thanking Google for helping to spread general Java know-how and promoting it on their phones, even if they've found a way to evade the licensing fees by using a 3rd party JVM.
Nokia has just started a partnership with Microsoft, so Windows Mobile and Bing Search will probably be their standard platform, with Visual C# as the primary language. Blackberry still uses Java, but they're going down the tubes as fast as Nokia. Meanwhile, Apple continues to prefer Objective C. That leaves only Android as the major handheld platform for any flavor of Java.
If Oracle wishes to spread Java on the handheld, they could maybe start by not suing the maker of Android. They should instead be negotiating with Google, trying to integrate Oracle services into Android, maybe offer Google a good deal on a fully licensed JVM that performs better than Dalvik. Wasting millions of dollars on lawyers and risking a huge schism with Google hardly seems worth it.
Microsoft is Google's rival; Microsoft is Oracle's rival. Increasingly, Apple is Google's rival. Maybe the two should get together and unite against Microsoft (and Apple, which has little invested in Oracle's product line). Stupid lawsuits, wasting everyone's time and money. How many programmers could they have hired for the amounts they're spending and will spend on this ridiculous effort?
Python for Android ... FTW! (Score:4, Insightful)
And I hear that Google has a lot of Python running in-house already. But if fewer CPU cycle per function performed is the goal for low power mobile devices, why not just plain old C?
Re:Yesterday? (Score:2, Insightful)
http://golang.org/ [golang.org]
Linux is fine, Java is the problem. And they're working on a better language already.
Re:Compensation for Java? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you serious? Are you somehow implying that Oracle isn't in the right?
$6.1 billion in damages? Who the hell are they trying to fool? What did they lose out on: a sizable market share of free?
Oracle suffered no damages whatsoever; most of Java is licensed under the GPL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_%28programming_language%29) so even though Google has reimplemented a lot of the functions and basically created a Java clone, Oracle has suffered no damage because it is software they GIVE AWAY FOR FREE.
Now, before you jump on me and correct me by saying it's a patent issue, I understand the distinction. However they gave away the software under the GPL and the GPL stipulates that the software can only be distributed without being encumbered by patents, so either Oracle is right and thus is in violation of it's (Sun's) own terms for Java, and Java needs to stop being redistributed (not an entirely bad idea) or Oracle is in the wrong, and Google has done no wrong by reimplementing the Java language. In any event. Oracle is full of shit; they have suffered no damages whatsoever.
I know Oracle hates free and their RDBMS licensing fees are completely ridiculous (licensed per core x RAM - they don't care if it's a server or if you need a seat for a development or QA lab workstation they license it based on what a given CPU "could" theoretically handle) but they fucked up; if they hate free software they should not have purchased Sun in the first place. Sun's processors were "open source," their office suite was, they opened up most of Java, and the OSes they offered (Linux, and SunOS/Solaris was eventually opened as well), and so on.
Beware "placed" articles (Score:5, Insightful)
Groklaw also identified this as FUD, also known as "trying the case in the newspapers".
--dave
Couple of errors there (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, cash isn't the only method for corporate acquisitions. The other one is that they buyer can trade their own equity for the purchase; "I'll give you n shares of my stock for each m shares of yours." This can be combined with cash, but cash is part of the buyer's market cap too, so to estimate one company's capacity to buy another, you look at the market cap, not at the cash reserves. GOOG are 155.99B, so they'd still have to give away more than half of their company to get half of Oracle.
Second, when a company is interested in buying a second one, they usually have to pay premium to convince the target's owners to sells. Buying Oracle would cost more than Oracle's market cap—or more precisely, a serious intent to buy Oracle would drive up Oracle's price.