
GOOG engineer admits to "strong indication that it is likely" he copied Sun code - ghurlman
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/09/google-engineer-admits-strong.html
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Florian Mueller alert.

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chugger
This was copied/pasted verbatim from the court documents.

The Google "engineer" used work at Sun and is currently Google's Chief Java
Architect.

"Q. BY MR. JACOBS: Do you have a recollection of accessing Sun code while you
were working on TimSort?

A. I don't have a recollection, but I'm perfectly willing to believe that I
did. You know, I think the similarity of the signature, the fact that, you
know, the three arguments are in the same order and have the same name, you
know, is a strong indication that it is likely that I did."

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Sure, but there is a lot more in those documents than just these samples.

It is very easy to skew a picture one way or the other by cherry picking a
pile of paper and mr. Mueller has a long enough history that I'd be wary of
anything he produces.

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chugger
cherry picked or not and regardless of your opinion of Florian Mueller, that
admission is important and pretty damning. Considering this guy used to work
at Sun and is supposed to be Google's Chief Java Architect.

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He wrote the original. It's not as if this is some guy that went and copied
SUN code wholesale and it's not as if we're talking about the core of android
here, it's _9_ lines.

Ok, damages: $500 should do it, and that's probably an overestimation. If
there is wholesale copyright infringement I'm sure we'll get to it but this
particular instance is hardly reason for a general alert.

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chugger
I think this strengthen's Oracle's case against Google. and it shows willful
infringement on the part of Google.

if you consider this admission together with the other evidence against
Google, it's pretty damning.

 _an October 2005 email written by Andy Rubin, Google’s senior VP of mobile,
concerning Sun, which held the patents at issue here before being acquired by
Oracle. “If Sun doesn’t want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon
our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language – or – 2) Do Java anyway and
defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way.”_

 _The second, this email from Google engineer Tim Lindholm (who was previously
a senior Java engineer at Sun) to Rubin in August of 2010: “What we’ve
actually been asked to do (by Larry and Sergey) is to investigate what
technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome. We’ve been over a
bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate
a license for Java under the terms we need.”_

even the Judge agrees.

 _As Alsup told Oracle’s attorneys moments after reading it in open court,
“That’s a pretty good document for you. That ought to be … big for you at the
trial.” Indeed — particularly if Rubin has to explain it on the stand. “You
know what they used to say about Joe Alioto,” Alsup said, referring to the
successful antitrust attorney. “In a big case like this, he only needed two
documents: He needed a document like this, the one I just read, and the Magna
Carta. And he won every case. And you are going to be on the losing end of
this document with Andy Rubin on the stand. … If willful infringement is
found, there are profound implications for a permanent injunction. So you
better think about that.”_

[http://allthingsd.com/20110727/old-email-may-bite-google-
in-...](http://allthingsd.com/20110727/old-email-may-bite-google-in-java-
patent-suit/)

