

Day 1 of Oracle v. Google trial - grellas
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120416085550303

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StavrosK
Groklaw is weird. It's one of the sites that I _never_ read, because I don't
really understand any of the articles, but I'm _very_ happy that it exists,
for some reason, and always click through to the articles (which, as I said, I
always fail to understand).

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eykanal
Very interesting summary. I've never been on a jury, and I learned two things
from that article:

1) The lawyers can say basically whatever they want, but the jurors are
"supposed" to only consider actual evidence - stuff shown from the witness
stand, with a few exceptions - when making their decision. I guess this is why
you want a really good lawyer... he can convince them to interpret the
evidence in his way.

2) The different parties can present stuff while talking (like the Lindholm
emails) which _aren't_ evidence, and it's basically up to the jury to remember
what's what. Potentially very confusing, and again, I guess that's why you
want a good lawyer.

If I'm wrong on either of these, I would appreciate it if someone who actually
knows something about law would correct me. Very interesting, thorough, and
well-done writeup!

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scromar
During opening arguments, the lawyers are not supposed to argue. In other
words, they are only supposed tell the jury what the evidence is going to
show. However, there is an art to this, and there is obviously an element of
persuasion in the way the evidence is presented. Also, for various reasons,
the opposing counsel may not object to possibly argumentative statements.

During closing statements the lawyers are free to argue that the evidence
should be interpreted a certain way, but you are basically correct that the
jury should use their own judgment based on the facts presented. Yes, a
persuasive lawyer is worth a lot!

As to point 2, there are exceptions and nuances, but basically the parties
CANNOT present things that are not admissible evidence. During opening
arguments the parties can use items that will eventually be admitted into
evidence, and the email is definitely one of those things. The parties have
already argued extensively over whether the email should be admitted, and the
judge has ruled that it will. Ideally, the jury never hears or sees anything
that is not admissible evidence.

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scromar
Clarification to my reply above: I meant to say "opening statements", and
"closing arguments", not the other way around. This is what they are are
actually called, I'm not sure why I wrote it the other way. I hope this
clarifies my meaning a little.

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debacle
I love Groklaw.

What are people's opinions on the copyrightability of a programming language?

In my opinion, on one hand Java is clearly a creative work, but obviously it
takes many idioms from other languages. I don't really see how they could have
a valid copyright claim, unless they're claiming copyright specifically on the
class interfaces, which is probably a very weak argument. Even then, I would
bet that the class interfaces are based on previous works in other languages.

I guess the bigger question would be 'Can you copyright a language?'
Programming languages are just a subset of all languages, and I don't believe
it would be right to allow someone to copyright aspects of a language.

So I guess my belief would be that the interfaces could potentially be
patentable, yet clearly aren't patented because they're based on the
interfaces in prior languages, but are not copyrightable because there's no
sound basis for copyrighting a language.

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vibrunazo
You mean legally our ethically?

Legally I have absolutely no clue. That's why they're in the court room for.
At the end of the day it's up to some random people's opinion.

Ethically, I'm pretty sure it does by far more harm than good. Because of the
whole standing in the shoulder of giants, and common as air arguments. That
most here are very aware of. The only counter point would be the economic
incentive that copyright gives oracle. But that's meaningless because we have
mountains of evidence that people will invent great languages anyway.

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cubicle67
the jury selection process seems designed to ensure that instead of a jury of
your peers, you end up with a jury of people completely ignorant about what's
involved in the case.

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eli
You mean because they threw out people who heard of "Open Source Software."

Yeah, that kinda stinks, but there is a bit of logic in having jurors who
don't have preconceived notions of what Open Source means (since there's a
good chance they're not even accurate).

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cubicle67
Here's the arstechnica's take [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2012/04/oracle-tells...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2012/04/oracle-tells-jury-you-cant-just-step-on-somebodys-
intellectual-property.ars)

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binarray2000
After months of discussion here and elsewhere I still don't understand why
Oracle is doing this. Google IS making money off of Android but Java and Java
APIs are one part of the whole package (Linux being the other). Google is no
threat to Oracle (almost no product portfolio overlapping). On the contrary
Google diminished Microsoft's influence in the mobile market and works towards
doing the same with the browser (Chrome), Office (Google Docs) and OS (Google
OS).

And MS is Oracle's (OK... Larry's :) ) arch rival no.1.

Why is Oracle fighting Google and wants to get a few hundreds of millions
(which is not much for the company that big) when they could let Google go its
thing and watch how MS gets weaker due to that?

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blinkingled
Larry and Jobs were close friends - Larry threatened a hostile takeover of
Apple back in the day if they did not bring Jobs back. Perhaps that is one
reason - to make Android less attractive in the marketplace.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Heck, Jobs put him on the board (to a crowd with some people booing) when he
came back to Apple.

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ChuckMcM
Now I want a Groklaw app for my iPad.

