oracle

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was Oracle's final witness for the API copyright phase of the trial, in which Oracle is seeking $1 billion in damages, and the first witness as Google began its defense.

Oracle lawyer David Boies focused his questioning of Schmidt on Google's apparent ongoing concern, expressed in e-mails and documents, about whether the company needed to get a license from Sun, despite its alleged "clean room" implementation. Google lawyer Robert Van Nest focused on Schmidt's interaction with his old friends at Sun, who Schmidt testified didn't express any concerns about … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- After a brief encounter yesterday afternoon here at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Oracle's lead attorney David Boies continued his carefully crafted interrogation of Google's Android chief Andy Rubin.

Boies placed about 40 documents in evidence to lay an intricate trail that he hopes will give the jury the impression that Rubin and Google knew that the company needed to license Java intellectual property.

To recap Monday's testimony, Boies walked Rubin through e-mails and documents from 2005 and 2006 to establish that early on in Android development, Google acknowledged the … Read more

Last updated: 9:30 PM PT 

As the second week of the Oracle-Google trial got underway Monday, Andy Rubin, the man behind the Android platform, took his turn on the witness stand. Oracle's lead lawyer, David Boies, quickly got to his main point in taking Rubin through a series of emails from 2005 and 2006. 

He established that Rubin knew that he didn't need a license for the Java programming language, but that the emails made clear during that period of Android's development he thought Google would need a partnership with Sun or a TCK … Read more

As the second week of the Oracle-Google trial got underway Monday, Judge William Alsup continued to probe the depths of Java and Android APIs and copyright law. Prior to the jury entering the courtroom, Alsup asked the Google team whether Google admitted that it copied the 37 APIs at the center of the lawsuit.

"I quibble with the word "copy," Google lawyer Bruce Baber said. "APIs have been out for long time, in books, on the web and available in (Apache) Harmony. We absolutely used and included them in Android so we would have them exactly … Read more

A ruling by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office may have added a small twist to Oracle's battle against Google.

Late yesterday, Oracle told the court that a patent previously rejected by the USPTO was certified last week, allowing it to be used in the database giant's Java patent case against Google, according to Foss Patents' Florian Mueller.

Google sees it differently.

"The USPTO ruling is on the prior art that was submitted at that time, not on the inherent validity of the patent itself," a Google representative said. "It is important to note … Read more

The Oracle v. Google trial continued on day five with more detailed dissection of Java and APIs and the difference, or similarities, between Android and Java. 

Google's lawyers framed their questions to elicit responses to make the case that the Java language is free and open, and the 37 applications programming interfaces that Oracle contends Google violated are not subject to copyright. Oracle's lawyers relentlessly pursued the line that Google knowingly ripped off restricted elements of Java to create Android.

In today's testimony, Google's attempts to license Java from Sun over several years was discussed. … Read more

week in review Oracle's Java patent and copyright lawsuit against Google and its Android mobile operating system kicked off this week with some familiar faces taking the witness stand.

Oracle attorney David Boies began his arguments by focusing on a particular presentation on July 25, 2005, listing "Must take license from Sun" as one of the bullet points of the agenda. Google CEO Larry Page, who testified via his video deposition, was essentially questioned about whether this presentation was written and led by Andy Rubin, senior vice president of mobile at Google (aka the father of Android), … Read more

Sun Microsystems' years-long effort to profit from Java has come to this: the chief executives of two of tech's most powerful companies, Oracle and Google, being grilled in court.

Scrapping over copyrights, patents, and licensing deals is an ignominious outcome for a technology that a decade and a half ago spooked Microsoft and seemed poised to inject dynamism into a largely static Web. Back when it debuted, Java was a brand that carried impressive power.

Though Java has been technologically influential, its brand clout with the average person has diminished as other software such as Apple's iOS and … Read more

David Boies, Oracle's lead lawyer in the Silicon Valley trial of titans, had a nice set-up for day four of the proceedings. On day three, Wednesday, Boies probed Google CEO Larry Page about his familiarity with Tim Lindholm, a software engineer working on the Android team who was involved in determining whether Google should acquire a license for Java.

Boies asked Page about a 2005 document stating, "Google/Android, with support from Tim Lindholm, negotiates the first OSS J2ME JVM license with Sun."  Lindholm had just joined Google from Sun.  

Boies asked Page … Read more