No Patent Infringement Found In Oracle vs. Google

sl4shd0rk writes "Today, the jury in the Oracle vs. Google trial found no infringement of patents by Google. The jury deliberated about 30 minutes to reach the verdict, bringing an end to the second phase of the trial, and a beginning to the damage phase, which may be very little of what Oracle originally asked for. Still no word on API copyright issues. Judge Alsup will be ruling on that in the near future, and it will certainly have an impact on the developer community."

Re:Didn't take long, did it?

[Jeng]

I love shill bashing as much as the next guy, but that is a bad example.

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[dgatwood]

It's a great deal more important than even you are suggesting. If APIs are copyrightable, then Linux and *BSD just became illegal for implementing POSIX without a license from The Open Group. Such a decision would absolutely have to be appealed up to SCOTUS, and if necessary, reversed by an emergency act of Congress. It simply cannot be allowed to stand, as it would essentially end Western civilization as we know it. Imagine 90% of the world's servers becoming illegal overnight. Imagine the machines that run 75% of the world's stock markets becoming illegal overnight. Such a decision would essentially bring the computing industry and every industry that depends on it to a grinding halt.

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It could also be construed to cover virtually all protocols and file formats, as well, since those are descriptions of the 'interface' by which an application can interact with another system or data storage structure in a compatible way. You'd basically end up in a situation where interoperability would be possible only at the pleasure of the original vendor for the duration of an entire copyright term. That would be pretty dramatic.

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[mounthood]

If the APIs turn out to be non-copyrightable, does this mean we can really all enjoy/suffer Java for free?

No, because Oracle will sue you for $6.1 billion anyway. The objective wasn't just money from Android, it was to assert control over Java. Oracle's actions since buying Sun have been consistent on this: making deals on OpenJDK for IBM to drop Harmony and Apple to drop their Java port, general patent FUD, and finally suing Google. With this ruling Oracle's control is clearly a financial 'might makes right' assertion without legal basis, but does that matter?

Re:Summary slightly wrong

[bill_mcgonigle]

Oracle started with 7 or 9 patents that they thought were worth $6 billion in damages/licensing/royalties/whatever.

But ... but ... Sun was only worth that valuation because Java was worth the price of beating Google into a cross-licensing deal on their big-database patents. Oh, dear.

I'm wondering if all the Sun projects get cancelled now, or if the lawyers convince the board to go for an appeal. After this performance, one might expect a beheading or two.

Re:Does this mean Java really is free?

[TrueSpeed]

It doesn't matter anyway. There were only nine lines of copied code and the only reason it was there is because the guy that submitted it originally to openJDK is the same guy that put it in Android. The judge learned java for this trial and even he said he could have wrote rangeCheck in a few minutes and had even done so accidentally many times.

Suck it, Oracle. You lose. Good day, sir!

Judge Alsup did not learn Java for this trial. He's a math major and was already familiar with other programming languages.