

Google responds to Oracle's patent lawsuit - misterbwong
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/05/google-responds-to-oracles-android-patent-lawsuit-we-break-it/

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misterbwong
This is a summary posted by Engadget. I thought it'd be more friendly than the
full doc.

Here's the link to the full document if anyone's interested:
[http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/oracle-
google-a...](http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/oracle-google-
answer.pdf)

~~~
btilly
But the full document is unintentionally hilarious.

The various invocations of

 _Google is without knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to
the truth of the allegations of paragraph _, and therefore denies them._

amused me greatly when I looked at what was denied. Similarly there was a lot
of _Google denies any remaining allegations of paragraph _._ when every claim
of that paragraph had been admitted.

~~~
joshstaiger
Not a lawyer, but knowingly infringing on a patent opens one to treble
damages: <http://www.patent-infringement.org/recover.html>

So maybe it’s legal speak for “Regardless of what the patents say, we weren’t
aware of them.”

~~~
btilly
You clearly did not compare the documents. Google denied statements such as
that Oracle is a software company, is headquartered where it is headquartered,
and denied that Oracle purchased Sun and owns the copyrights to Java.

Worry about triple damages was not the reason.

~~~
joshstaiger
You’re right. My mistake.

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Rabidgremlin
Here is a diagram showing who is suing who in the mobile space:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/04/microsoft-m...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/04/microsoft-
motorola-android-patent-lawsuit)

~~~
jsm386
Much clearer redesign of the diagram:
<http://news.designlanguage.com/post/1252039209>

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zacharypinter
If I understood correctly, Google is positioning itself not only to defend
Android for themselves, but to further open the Java platform and support
Apache Harmony in the process. This sound like great news.

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acqq
Not a lawyer, but I'd summarize: In Google's view, their use of the parts of
the Harmony code as is allowed as the Harmony code is a clean room
implementation and Android doesn't use that code to run Java, so there was no
need to get licenses from Sun/Oracle. Regarding patents, they simply claim
they don't infringe, I don't see that they claim why -- maybe because they
don't actually use any code, but the device makers who install them on their
hardware?

~~~
rulereric
Clean room design would be a defense against the copyright charge. They broke
clean room design by hiring engineers from sun, jvm engineers etc. Even
google's ceo came from sun and he lead java at sun.

The patents are integral to the JVM.

Google should have bought Palm and Sun for the patents.

.NET can step on the JVM patents:
<http://www.itworld.com/040409microsoftlegal>

They got lucky with yahoo: [http://news.cnet.com/Google,-Yahoo-bury-the-legal-
hatchet/21...](http://news.cnet.com/Google,-Yahoo-bury-the-legal-
hatchet/2100-1024_3-5302421.html) They could have been pushed out of the
space. They are use to getting sweet deals in stomping on others patents,
copyrights, etc.

~~~
acqq
> They broke clean room design by hiring engineers from sun, jvm engineers
> etc.

AFAIK not unless Oracle proves that exactly these engineers were involved. And
a lot more must be first proved to establish even "involved in what."

> The patents are integral to the JVM.

Google doesn't use JVM in Android.

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latch
Is it whatsoever possible for Google to get a group of companies together and
counter-sue Oracle and Microsoft en masse? I mean Motorola isn't without a
strong patent portfolio, and I doubt they'd be the only ones on board?

Forgive me if its a naive thought, but it seems like we might just be seeing
the beginning of Google patent issues (and I obviously treat the MS/Motorola
thing as a Google patent issue).

Is the risk of pissing off MS/Oracle too great (not for Google, but for
potential allies?)

Why haven't they gone nuclear yet?! I wanna see that bad.

~~~
sgk284
Google already licensed the patents from Microsoft that Microsoft is now suing
Motorola over.

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dminor
So, the standard opening moves to the multi-year patent litigation dance.

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chubs
On a related note, I haven't heard much on here / proggit about MS sueing
motorola over android patents, any news there?

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obluda
it's gonna be so much fun, can't wait.

