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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 e

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
tzs 15y ago
Note that the order is only that the other claims be permanently abandoned against this one product. Suppose Google loses, and ends up having to pay royalties to Oracle for their current incarnation of Android. At some point, Google then releases a new version of Android, where they have changed the parts that were found to infringe so as to not infringe in their opinion, and stop paying royalties. Is that a new product? My guess is that for purposes of this kind of order, it would be.

jannotti 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.

tzs 15y ago

Note that the order is only that the other claims be permanently abandoned against this one product. Suppose Google loses, and ends up having to pay royalties to Oracle for their current incarnation of Android. At some point, Google then releases a new version of Android, where they have changed the parts that were found to infringe so as to not infringe in their opinion, and stop paying royalties. Is that a new product? My guess is that for purposes of this kind of order, it would be.