

Oracle Ordered to Reduce Claims Against Google From 132 to 3 - gluegadget
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2011050505150858

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bruce511
From the court document; "Each side may file a five-page (double spaced,
twelve-point Times New Roman font, no footnotes, and no attachments)
critique..."

Methinks the judge has played with lawyers before and seen first-hand their
propensity to deliver amazonian briefs. The programmer in me however cannot
help but notice that he omitted the size of paper they can use for each
"page". Or maybe he assumes it's "legal" - by definition. <g>

But I like an accurate spec I do. I wish that all my clients were this
precise.

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corin_
How amazing would it be to see them deliver it on five A1 pages, just to see
the look on the judge's face.

~~~
mfringel
IANAL, but such an action would likely be construed as contempt of court,
especially given the exactness of what was requested.

~~~
corin_
There's zero chance it will actually happen so it's pretty moot.

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zmmmmm
I'm not on Oracle's side in this case, but can someone explain how can a judge
just toss out 98% of the claims in a patent case without any explanation other
than (apparently) that it will take too long to try them all?

~~~
othermaciej
I was wondering the same thing. Can a judge really order plaintiffs to
permanently abandon claims just because they would be too complicated to try?
He hasn't even decided which claims can continue, just says Oracle needs to
pick 3. Another oddity is that he's limiting the number of prior art claims
Google can bring. Can a judge really limit your allowable defenses?

I've always thought there had to be some merit-based or procedural argument to
dismiss any part of a case with prejudice. Also, there's cases all the time
with more than 3 patent claims at stake, so clearly there's no absolute rule
that a case can't go beyond a certain level of complexity.

I hope someone with actual legal knowledge can chime in.

~~~
jannotti
Well, consider the alternative.

Suppose Google says, "We have 78,354 instances of prior art, we'd like you to
consider each one in turn. If one of them is good enough, we win. If none are,
we lose. Sometime next century."

Since it only takes one piece of prior art for a legitimate defence, it makes
sense to say that the defence should only present the best examples.

Limiting the plaintiff does seem a bit harder to justify. If each infringement
is legitimate, it seems Oracle should get to try each one. I suppose that if
they succeed with these three, they would have a strong case to make saying,
"Now we get to try more". So it makes some sense. Try your best examples
first, don't waste the court's time and money until you've shown some
legitimacy to your claims.

~~~
othermaciej
Yeah, but the judge says all other claims have to be dropped forever, so
Oracle never gets to try them.

So if someone infringes a lot of your patents, you only ever get to enforce a
small subset? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

~~~
tygorius
No, the last sentence of the first quote from the judge's order says Oracle
can't use any of those claims for _existing_ products. As soon as Oracle comes
up with a new product those claims are possible again.

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hinathan
Judge Alsup also ruled in the recent case where Edge Games was trolling EA.
Sharp guy, and clearly a low tolerance for BS.
<http://boingboing.net/2010/10/05/judge-rules-against.html>

~~~
nopassrecover
From the article:

Judge William Alsup described Edge Games as 'trolling' and suggested that it
could face criminal charges

In his order, Alsup even created info-graphics comparing Dr. Langdell's USPTO
filings with the actual products, describing in detail "evidence of fraud"
that forces the court to play "spot the differences:"

\---

This judge is brilliant.

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podperson
Note from reading carefully and per comments on the post, the "3" may be a
typo because the timetable involves reducing the claims from 3 to 20 to 10 or
somesuch.

In essence, it's clear that the judge wants to pare down the case to the
strongest elements from each side using a triage process on both sides. Seems
reasonable and not necessarily an indication that the judge is leaning one way
or another.

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ComputerGuru
I thought groklaw was being discontinued?

~~~
biot
May 16th, Groklaw's anniversary.[0] Though apparently it may continue in some
form? [1]

[0] <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110409161444432>

[1] <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110414184224418>

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rbanffy
Next time, Oracle will use a court in East Texas...

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tzs
Maybe after they get a time machine and go back to around 2006, when
plaintiffs were winning more than defendants there, as opposed to now where it
isn't even in the top 5.

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guelo
I want the source for this claim.

I've seen this info spread before but I've never seen a source for it and it
strikes me as fake. Is there even anyone compiling court house judgment
rankings? And if it is true that other courts are more favorable why would
patent trolls continue trying to take the cases to east Texas?

~~~
tzs
[http://www.natlawreview.com/article/middle-district-
florida-...](http://www.natlawreview.com/article/middle-district-florida-
ranks-among-best-plaintiffs-patent-infringement-cases)

[http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/05/patent-litigation-
fo...](http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/05/patent-litigation-forum-
shopping.html)

~~~
guelo
Thanks!

It still looks like East Texas is favorable for plaintiffs, and it still
retains the reputation as the most favorable.

