An IP troll is properly a non-practicing entity. Both RIAA and Oracle provide the IP in question. The excessive requests are partly negotiation - in our advers

An IP troll is properly a non-practicing entity. Both RIAA and Oracle provide the IP in question. The excessive requests are partly negotiation - in our adversarial system, it's counsels' job, on each side, to put their case as strongly as possible, and the judge (and jury if applicable) to decide. So they ask for as much as they can. The decisions often seem excessive to me - but that's the fault of the judge, jury and law. BTW: given that Google knew they were on dodgey ground when they used Java differently from Sun's licensing, and a lot of money has changed hands based on it, there could be a high pay-out. One guide is when Sun sued Microsoft for breaking compatibility with Java: $20 million http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#Sun_vs._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#... (though MS was happy with the outcome, and I think they know they got off lightly). OTOH, when Oracle sued SAP for some dodgey business practices, they won $1.3 billion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#Sun_vs._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#... (SAP wasn't happy).