

Judge criticizes Google and Oracle at hearing - kenjackson
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/21/us-oracle-google-lawsuit-idUSTRE76K7U820110721

======
kenjackson
_Google maintains that Oracle deserves no damages.

"Zero is ridiculous," said Alsup, who rejected Google's argument that its ad
sales should not be included in estimating damages from the Android system.

"They're totally wrong on that," Alsup said._

Alsup is the judge.

------
flocial
They could have had Sun for $7.4 billion with Goesling (already there) and
MySQL as part of the deal along with all the other departed talent.
Personally, I don't know why they didn't go after Palm (much cheaper than
these barely alive startups they've been acquiring) either just for the
patents alone.

~~~
SimHacker
James Gosling left Oracle in disgust, and later joined Google.

------
netmau5
And they could have benefitted mightily from acquiring Sun, moreso than simply
owning Java. How was Groupon worth 6B in their eyes and Sun not 7B? Maybe
hindsight is ruining my perspective more than I can see.

~~~
RuadhanMc
Well my guess is that Groupon is appealing because it is purely an advertising
platform, while Sun was a big company with lots of different products. Java
was one of them, and while it would have been great in hindsight for Google to
take control of the Java related patents, they would have also had to deal
with all of Sun's other products (including hardware) which would not have
been so appealing.

What would Google have done with Sun's hardware business? Shut it down? Gone
into the hardware business themselves?

Groupon is pie in the sky sort of stuff and thus easier to acquire
logistically speaking.

------
orangecat
My impression is that the judge is determining the hypothetical damages _if_
Android is found to infringe on Oracle's patents. Of course Google will say
that's zero and Oracle will say it's eleventy billion.

------
nl
The title (here "It appears Google will amost certainly have to pay something
to Oracle") is totally wrong.

This is about the parties disagreeing what damages might apply if Google is
found guilty. That is by no means certain, and this article doesn't address
that issue at all.

It would be extremely unusual if the amount to come out of this phase of the
case was $0, but Google is using that to put an argument for a low figure.

~~~
latch

      but Google is using that to put an argument for a low figure.
    

And pissing off the judge by making stupid claims. Negotiating isn't about
starting at the lowest number, it's about starting at the lowest _reasonable_
number. Anything else and you just antagonize people (which Google apparently
did)

~~~
blinkingled
To be fair to Google - doesn't the fact that they even agree to any damages
weaken their case? I don't understand why they would have to determine damages
before investigating if they infringed or not.

Going with Java and not buying Sun was HUGE mistake on Google's part - major
strategic gaffe. You can thank Mark Hurd for the fact that HP did not buy Sun
- even then Google would be better off as HP has no history of suing people
left and right.

~~~
tzs
In a patent case, the plaintiff puts forth two arguments for the jury:

1\. The defendant infringes the patent.

2\. The damages for said infringement should be $X.

The defendant will put forth three arguments:

1\. Plaintiff doesn't even have a valid patent. This is really several
arguments, directed at pretty much everything that plaintiff must have done
for their patent to be valid and theirs.

2\. Defendant does not infringe the patent.

3\. _IF_ they did infringe the patent, the plaintiff's damage numbers are nuts
and the correct damages would be $Y (which is much smaller than $X).

To make their damage arguments, both sides bring in experts on damages, who
write reports which are submitted to the court, and then the experts testify
about these reports in front of the jury. Before the trial starts, both sides
challenge the qualifications of the other side's damages expert, trying to
convince the court he's a quack and the court should throw out his report and
make the other side offer a reasonable damage theory. That's about the stage
they are at now.

------
Nate75Sanders
It's pretty clear this man is going to hate both Google and Oracle. Oracle
owns Java and Google is claiming that all technologies besides Java "suck".

As usual, digging deeper reveals the true story:

The federal judge's middle name is, quite literally, "Haskell":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Haskell_Alsup>

The article cleverly hides this so that a layperson can't realize that his
true disdain is for these two behemoths because they're not using LFSPs and a
particular one, at that.

------
jinushaun
Why didn't Google buy Sun when Sun was looking for a buyer? Google based its
operating system on a patent-encumbered language like Java. They had licensing
issues with Sun around Java even before Oracle bought them. Why didn't they
buy Sun?

~~~
baguasquirrel
I can't shake the feeling that it's because they didn't want to play the bad
guy. Sun was hemorrhaging money. Layoffs were going to have to happen.

~~~
markokocic
Either that, or they were not sure that they could affort to outbid Oracle?

The fact is that Oracle can make much more money from Sun aquisition than
Google ever could. And part of that moneymaking include suing everyone else.

------
jrockway
Doesn't this all end when Google decides they have a patent on something
related to Oracle's products? It's like mutually assured destruction, except
the losers are the small countries without any nuclear weapons.

~~~
rryan
In general, Google has not aggressively patented things. They have been issued
~300 patents. Compare to IBM's over 26k patents in the US alone. Essentially
they showed up to a nuclear weapon fight with a bouquet of flowers.

EDIT: I realize IBM is 100 years old and Google is 10.. they're still way
ahead in patents-per-year, and the 26k is only _active_ patents.

~~~
moe
Might be wishful thinking, but this crossed my mind:

The only winning move is not to play...

~~~
jerf
Remember the context of that. It's not a general statement (even if the
authors would agree with the generalized "don't fight" version); it's in the
context of two sides armed to the teeth. If only one side is armed, there is
the "nuke the other side" solution, which at least in the way the computer was
measuring works just fine. And in this case we aren't talking about literal
deaths, so it applies even moreso. MAD doesn't work as a strategy when you
don't have the A or the D.

------
latch
I'm loving this judge.

------
shareme
Be careful of what you read..there are a lot of biased mouth-pieces adding
their two cents in the reporting..

A less biased report that actually matches what the judge said:
[http://www.mercurynews.com/weird-
news/ci_18525231?nclick_che...](http://www.mercurynews.com/weird-
news/ci_18525231?nclick_check=1)

------
Hisoka
I love to see Google squirm. They've made enough webmasters squirm over their
Panda update. Now it's their turn.

~~~
redthrowaway
The only people I've heard complain about Panda are the SEO and content farm
crowd. I'd pay those guys to whine at my wedding; a sweeter song has ne'er
been sung.

~~~
WalterGR
_The only people I've heard complain about Panda are the SEO and content farm
crowd._

I'm not a member of either crowd. Here's me complaining:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2767018>

And I'm not the only one who has a quality site that was adversely affected.
There _was_ collateral damage. It would have been practically impossible for
there _not_ to be. The only question is the matter of scale.

