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Oracle Not Satisfied With Potential $150,000; Goes Against Judge's Warning 234

bobwrit writes with news about how the monetary damages in the Google v. Oracle case might shake out. On Thursday, Judge Alsup told Oracle the most it could expect for statutory damages was a flat $150,000, a far cry from the $6.1 billion Oracle wanted in 2011, or even the $2.8 million offered by Google as a settlement. However, Oracle still thinks it can go after infringed profits, even though Judge Alsup specifically warned its lawyers they were making a mistake. He said, "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions." Groklaw has a detailed post about today's events.
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Oracle Not Satisfied With Potential $150,000; Goes Against Judge's Warning

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  • by reiserifick ( 2616539 ) on Friday May 11, 2012 @04:55PM (#39973673)
    that lawyers would ignore the advice of the judge and pursue ridiculous sums of money with no basis.
  • by spirit_fingers ( 777604 ) on Friday May 11, 2012 @04:59PM (#39973725)

    You have to feel sorry for Larry. He was hoping the Google settlement would pay his America's Cup expenses. $150k will barely cover In-N-Out burgers for the deck hands.

  • by catmistake ( 814204 ) on Friday May 11, 2012 @05:07PM (#39973799) Journal
    What the fuck are they talking about...? Google pirated a GPLed programming language and used it in Android?!! What damages could Oracle possibly be listing? I wanna know. Show the damages, Oracle.
  • by DragonWriter ( 970822 ) on Friday May 11, 2012 @05:12PM (#39973861)

    Oracle can go after infringers profits, but in doing so it has to give up on statutory damages.

    The Judge has pointed out that they haven't submitted any evidence supporting that Google has any profits associated with the rangeCheck method that is at issue, so this may not be a wise course of action.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Awwwwwww judge, don't clue them in. I'd so like to see Oracle awarded $1 for this whole shenanigans, it'd be a much more embarrassing result than losing the case.

      • Don't mind. If Oracle could by any means get any clue, they'd not be in this mess to start with.

        They've already showed that they are completely willing to go against the orders of the judge, what makes you think they'll obey a recomendation?

    • by jrumney ( 197329 )
      Maybe they are planning to show a graph of Oracle profits since its existance vs lines of code that Oracle owns. Then claim that by extrapolating that graph, 9 lines of code is worth a hundred billion dollars, "but ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we are being nice by only claiming 6.1 billion".
  • by adisakp ( 705706 ) on Friday May 11, 2012 @05:18PM (#39973923) Journal
    Can someone post the 9 infringing lines of code here for us to see?
    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11, 2012 @05:25PM (#39973983)

      From OpenJDK:

      private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex) {

                      if (fromIndex > toIndex)

                              throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex +
                                                    ") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")");

                      if (fromIndex arrayLen)
                              throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex);

              }

      From Google:

      private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex) {

                      if (fromIndex > toIndex)
                              throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex +
                                                    ") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")");

                      if (fromIndex arrayLen)
                              throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex);

              }

      }

    • by adisakp ( 705706 ) on Friday May 11, 2012 @05:25PM (#39973989) Journal
      Wait - is this it??? [brainbits.ca]
    • by dmesg0 ( 1342071 )

      private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex) {
      if (fromIndex > toIndex)
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex +
      ") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")");
      if (fromIndex arrayLen)

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by DarthBling ( 1733038 )

      Shamelessly stolen from Githaron's post [slashdot.org]

      http://notavailablein.ca/2012/05/googles-infringement-against-oracle-9-lines-of-code/ [notavailablein.ca]

      private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex) {
      if (fromIndex > toIndex)
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex +
      ") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")");
      if (fromIndex < 0)
      throw new ArrayInd

  • Obviousness (Score:4, Informative)

    by markkezner ( 1209776 ) on Friday May 11, 2012 @05:23PM (#39973969)

    I presume the 9 lines in question refer to TimSort.rangeCheck() [oswego.edu].

    Have you ever looked at it? If I had to implement that method, I probably would have done it the exact same way.

    • private static void checkRange(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex)
      {
      if (fromIndex > toIndex)
      throw new InvalidArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex +
      ") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")");
      if (toIndex

      • The range is [fromIndex, toIndex), so the end of the range is exclusive and hence checkRange(100, 17, 100) is supposed to be valid.

        Of course you would expect that to be documented in checkRange rather than having to look at all the callers and seeing how they use it, but apparently no one bothered. Which makes that it was copied pretty clear cut, I would hope two people couldn't be that silly.

      • In Java, do arrays start with 0 or 1?

        • I assume they start at 0, since the code is also checking to see if fromIndex < 0. So either the code is wrong on one end or the other, but for all I know about Java, indexes could start at zero and go up to the number given...

        • anything even remotely serious will have zero-based arrays; java falls under the 'serious' category (perhaps too serious, but i'm a dynamic type of guy)

    • If I had to implement that method I'd have checked that the highest index of a zero based array is length - 1 for my third comparison...

    • What's amusing is that the 9 lines in question don't even implement the algorithm; they perform a quick sanity check before the real computation starts. Is this really the best they have? Couldn't they have found more creative lines of code to be infringing on a copyright?

      Anyway I've been looking some stuff up. TimSort was originally written into Python [python.org] by Tim Peters in 2002 (BSD-style license). If I'm not mistaken, that would mean that Sun wrote a trivial check as part their own re-implementation of someon

      • I could have misremembered this, but it gets worse than that:

        I was under the impression that it was actually Google/Android engineers that ported Timsort to Java and contributed it upstream.

    • I'd put spaces around the fourth plus sign in it, though.

  • From WP:
    "Eidetic memory ( /adtk/), commonly referred to as photographic memory,
    is a medical term, popularly defined as the ability to recall images, sounds, or
    objects in memory with extreme precision and in abundant volume."

    I would assert(tm) that the class of programmers a company like Google hires
    would have Eidetic memory to one degree or another. Fundamental patterns
    would stick and be used little different that humming a tune in the shower.

    "Double double toil and trouble fire burn and cauldron bubble..

  • by Capt.DrumkenBum ( 1173011 ) on Friday May 11, 2012 @06:04PM (#39974325)
    Oracle has a history of going after smaller companies, (Ask me how I know.) and threatening litigation. Smaller companies usually fold, and just pay out. It is cheaper than court. I love that they have decided to go after someone who can afford to say "Let's let the courts decide."
  • But Oracle said... (Score:3, Informative)

    by inode_buddha ( 576844 ) on Friday May 11, 2012 @06:09PM (#39974369) Journal

    But Oracle said this isn't about money! In court no less!

  • by martin-boundary ( 547041 ) on Friday May 11, 2012 @06:31PM (#39974567)
    In the beginning there was the word.

    Then God ran out of money, and sold off the word to Oracle.

    "May 12, 2012. In a highly controversial Ohio court filing today, Oracle Corp. demanded damages of 6 quintillion dollars for the unauthorized use of derived literary works, including the sun, sea and sky, and fishes, animals and rocks dated from about 6000 years ago. A tiny chosen sample of humans is also expected to be sold off to the highest bidder to pay for initial court expenses."

  • Bad Summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by dlsmith ( 993896 ) on Friday May 11, 2012 @06:56PM (#39974757)
    The larger figures quoted ($6.1 billion) refer to the estimated total for all infringement claims. The $150,000 discussed today is for one claim. Of course, the whole case doesn't revolve around the nine lines of code. The big (unresolved) questions are about copyright of the APIs and infringement of patents.

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