9 ms·

Verdict for Google in Oracle's patent infringement case

723 points by grellas 14y ago

parfe 14y ago
Kudos to the jury. They put a lot of effort into understanding the issue at hand. Based on courtroom reporting, the jury paid attention and they asked clarifying questions while deliberating to make sure they understood. Software patents are a mess. Oracle's arguments were terrible from a CS standpoint (and their expert should be embarrassed). I believe the only issue still on the table is API copyrightability which Judge Aslup will rule on as a matter of law. The jury found for Oracle in that instance because the jury instructions essentially mandated it. I expect Aslup will rule for Google on that claim as well. Oracle's current claim for money is literally for 9 lines of code called rangeCheck (which anyone in a high school intro to java class could write), and 8 test files copied by a subcontractor and never distributed to end users. A certain Oracle paid blogger will still manage to post how Oracle basically got everything it wanted.
- pratikjhaveri 14y ago
  Who's the paid blogger?
  - koenigdavidmj 14y ago
    Florian Mueller. http://www.dailytech.com/Top+AntiAndroid+Blogger+Florian+Mueller+is+Being+Paid+by+Oracle/article24633.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Top+AntiAndroid+Blogger+Florian+Mue...
  - nooooooo 14y ago
    Florian Mueller?
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    Florian al-Sahaf
  - mintplant 14y ago
    Most likely a reference to Florian Mueller, of http://www.fosspatents.com/ http://www.fosspatents.com/ Detail: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/04/19/1357207/florian-mueller-outs-himself-as-oracle-employee http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/04/19/1357207/florian-muell...
    - cooldeal 14y ago
      Is there any evidence that PJ is not a paid blogger herself? At least Florian was honest to declare on his blog that he was paid by Oracle to do some work and his blog might be tainted by that.
      - air 14y ago
        Florian pretended to be a FOSS advocate for a very long time and refused to disclose his clients, when it was clear for all that he was being paid by Microsoft.
        taligent 14y ago
        And you can't be both ? Or does that mean that I should ignore anyone who is being paid by a company. Because that would be almost everyone, right ?
        air 14y ago
        "And you can't be both ?" His "FOSS advocacy" for the last few years has consistently been solely cheering for every patent and copyright suit against open source software. "Or does that mean that I should ignore anyone who is being paid by a company." Being paid for PR that borders astroturfing and refusing to disclose that is over the line for me.
        Natsu 14y ago
        I did think that he also campaigned against software patents in Europe, though I think there was controversy there, too, concerning his methods.
  - shabda 14y ago
    I was referring Florian Mueller, I think.
- nknight 14y ago
  Unless they stipulated to something I missed, there's actually another very important issue on the table: Fair use. The jury decided Google "infringed", but couldn't agree whether the fair use defense applied. If Alsup rules APIs are not copyrightable, the fair use defense is moot and we're done (barring appeal, which will surely happen), but if he were to go the other way, fair use may have to be re-litigated in front of a new jury.
  - parfe 14y ago
    Just saw this tweet from a journalist: Dan Levine ‏@FedcourtJunkie: We all just interviewed juror, who said jury was split 9-3 for google on copyright fair use. Um, wow. https://twitter.com/FedcourtJunkie/status/205370887078285313 https://twitter.com/FedcourtJunkie/status/205370887078285313
    - nknight 14y ago
      "Wow" is right. There's also this interesting gem right after: https://twitter.com/FedcourtJunkie/status/205371711233851392 https://twitter.com/FedcourtJunkie/status/205371711233851392 > Juror said it was his opinion that more tech savvy jurors were less likely to go for limits on openness. Ie they were pro google This really says it all. Ultimately Oracle can only win if the jury is borderline luddite.
      - taligent 14y ago
        Being non tech savvy does not make you a luddite.
        wtallis 14y ago
        No, but it's getting pretty hard to argue that a randomly selected jury of Northern California citizens should be completely devoid of smartphone owners.
      - alanh 14y ago
        Why is a 9-3 split particularly surprising?
- RivieraKid 14y ago
  The judge is a programmer by the way: http://www.i-programmer.info/news/193-android/4224-oracle-v-google-judge-is-a-programmer.html http://www.i-programmer.info/news/193-android/4224-oracle-v-...
  - monochromatic 14y ago
    Judge, not jury.
  - krschultz 14y ago
    That is incredible! It's easy to knock the courts, but I think it's worth remembering that becoming a federal judge is very difficult and most of these guys have impressive backgrounds.
nthitz 14y ago
"$6 billion damages" headlines sell more ads is all
- fluidcruft 14y ago
  "Oracle loses $6 billion" should sell pretty well, too. To bad it won't happen, though--it would be nice to have some blowback temper jackassery and chest-thumping.
  - taligent 14y ago
    "Oracle CEO kills kittens" also. It's equally as accurate and makes just as much sense.
dayjah 14y ago
Great news for Google, Android, and an entire ecosystem. Bad news for my ORCL stock :/
- jcdavis 14y ago
  ORCL is down 0.4% as of now, vs 1.08% for the NASDAQ, so maybe not?
- LockeWatts 14y ago
  Why do you have ORCL stock?
  - bmelton 14y ago
    Is there a reason he shouldn't have stock in Oracle?
    - andrewem 14y ago
      Some people believe that you should invest in companies at least in part based on whether their actions are broadly good for society: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socially_responsible_investing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socially_responsible_investing Perhaps that's the point of view that LockeWatts is coming from. I certainly would feel weird purchasing stock in certain companies, like tobacco companies, though mutual funds I own probably have some of their stock. The way Oracle's behaving many people might feel similarly about them.
      - bmelton 14y ago
        Despite my terse snarkiness (for which I ought to apologize, I think HN is turning me into an asshole, as I am definitely not 'assuming good faith' on too many posts,) that's what I believed he was implying. If I'd gone on, I would have suggested that Oracle is a for-profit company, and generally tends to act as one would expect them to. They are beholden to their shareholders to maximize value. I could see an argument for disagreeing with the notion of patents in general, and would respect a person for saying "I won't hold stock in Oracle as I feel they leverage the patent sytem, which I don't agree with." What I took issue with was the idea of sitting in judgement of someone else for not sharing those values, and by extension, making the implied assertion that holding stock in Oracle is evil. It should probably be noted that I'm not on my best behavior today, but at least as far as I know, Oracle isn't doing anything clearly evil, like killing children, or worshiping Satan (though I could see the debatability of even those, really). I could also surmise that probably quite a few people sharing the stance of socially responsible investing probably hold stock in Apple, a company that also leverages the patent system, as well as (in my opinion, though I don't intend to debate it until I've 'exhaled the bad air, and inhaled the good') engaging in exploitative work practices via FoxConn and such. All this is of course conjecture, as the grandparent may have had a perfectly good reason for having asked the question that has nothing to do with this, and I am at least trying to allow room for that assumption. Either way, I think it deserves more dialog, which is why I asked the question. Thanks for the post though. I didn't know that there was a term coined for such behavior, so I've learned that at least.
dannyr 14y ago
This post made it to #1 on HN in less than 10 minutes. Is this a record?
- mbreese 14y ago
  Don't all posts start at #1 immediately, then trail away until they get upvotes? Or is that just how a user sees their own submissions?
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    You see it as #1 on the 'newest' page, but not on the 'new' page.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  No, the instagram buyout was #1/Pg1 less than a minute after it hit /newest :-) I suspect a lot of people (like me) are following this closely so as soon as there is news it gets voted up here. Glad the jury found in Google's favor, I think that was the right call. And I really hope that Judge Alsup finds that APIs are not copywritable, Still waiting on that one.
- olalonde 14y ago
  I believe it might have been this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742902 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742902 ;)
jacquesm 14y ago
Fantastic news for Google and the rest of the world. And a good thing for the other Larry as well, at least now he has some confirmation that he really isn't god. Next up, the appeal.
- pron 14y ago
  I don't know. I was kinda hoping Google will license Java for Andorid, and we'll have one Java instead of two.
  - wtallis 14y ago
    That's not Google's choice. Sun and Oracle are the ones refusing to allow the Java trademark to be used by an open-source implementation for a mobile platform.
    - wmf 14y ago
      I think Oracle would allow it if the price was right. The problem is that "one Java" probably means Java SE, which means you have to use bloat like JAR files and Swing/AWT, which would make Android less competitive with iOS.
      - pmjordan 14y ago
        Would it really help if someone paid $Nbn for the Java label for some snapshot of Harmony or whatever? Open source software (which is open in spirit, not just by name) is always a moving target. As soon as you fork it, it's no longer covered by the license. And when is it a fork, exactly?
        wmf 14y ago
        I don't think anybody's talking about a snapshot. During the Sun/Google negotiations there was discussion of an ongoing partnership where Google would be forced to adopt new versions of Java as the JCP released them. Google didn't want the JCP backseat-driving Android, so they declined.
gringomorcego 14y ago
On a sidenote: I think most people should be much more questionable about groklaw. I am big open source and FSF advocate, but I'm not above thinking that groklaw is controlled/funded by a much larger power. I hope it's just a conspiracy theory. But I do think that anonymity works both ways; it can imply that you want to say the truth unencumbered, but it also can imply astroturfing. Just because the wind blows this way doesn't mean it always will.
- jasonlotito 14y ago
  > but I'm not above thinking that groklaw is controlled/funded by a much larger power. Proof? Anything? This line has been used since the early days of SCO. I've never seen anything resembling proof. Indeed, Groklaw has earned the trust I give them. Do not mistake ignorance for insightfulness.
  - ssmall 14y ago
    I really like the blog and its my go to site for legal software news and I don't think there is some kind of higher power backing it but I'm still very careful with everything I read there. I haven't seen any evidence of corporate backing, but there is no attempt to hide bias. Its definitely far from an objective news source.
    - nknight 14y ago
      > Its definitely far from an objective news source. Let me know when you find one.
    - wtallis 14y ago
      What bias? You may be confusing bias with opinion. "Equal time" is not unbiased reporting, and having a clear opinion is not bias, unless your opinion turns out to be consistently wrong.
      - lmm 14y ago
        The editorializing gets tiresome when I just want to find out what happened during the trial. It feels like reading the Daily Mail; you can get actual news from there, but you have to be constantly on your guard against osmosing their opinions.
Nate75Sanders 14y ago
Can someone explain what the practical outcomes are of this verdict? For programmers and companies?
- revelation 14y ago
  This particular one? Not much. But its good news to hear that a jury isn't to be fooled by mispresenting facts. Oracle literally tried to present dexopt as a dynamic optimizer, because it optimizes for the hardware/software configuration on your smartphone. Thats coming from the makers of the HotSpot VM.
  - waqf 14y ago
    I would rather say that Oracle tried to present "dynamic" as a word which refers to what dexopt does. Because there was no dispute over what dexopt does, only over what "dynamic" means.
- 0x09 14y ago
  The all-important conclusion (which has yet to be reached) is to the question of whether APIs can be copyrighted. Up until now, all of our software licensing laws have operated under the assumption that APIs and header files are not copyrightable. At this stage it's expected that the status quo will be maintained, which is good for mostly everyone. If the judge were to rule otherwise, and the rule were to be enforced, many software licenses would need to be adapted, and a lot of messy things start happening for projects that provide compatibility with other APIs. As an example, something like GNUstep couldn't exist.
- taligent 14y ago
  The outcome for and against would have meant absolutely nothing for programmers and companies. It was all about Oracle extracting licensing fees from Google.
  - akmiller 14y ago
    That's not true. Almost all decisions in court are made in light of similar cases that had been tried in the past. Therefore, it stands to reason that any decision made, whether for or against Google, could effect future decisions for companies involved in similar suits. I think, in this particular instance, a decision against Google could have set a terrible precedent.
gruseom 14y ago
FTA plus amen: "Patents and software need to get a divorce before somebody gets hurt. The damage is astounding, and the IP is so puny. There is an imbalance in the legal universe, and it needs fixing."
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
iscrewyou 14y ago
I am not a girl but...yay!
- jamestaylor1 14y ago
  huh?
gfodor 14y ago
Almost as memorable as the verdict will be the outright shame and absurdity that was the "rangeCheck defense." It made a mockery of the system and was insulting to the judge and jury. "Check upper bound, check lower bound, throw exception. You can't explain that!"
- raldi 14y ago
  Could you elaborate on that? I'm familiar with the rangeCheck() issue, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say about it.
  - gfodor 14y ago
    rangeCheck's implementation is a baby step above "Hello World". Oracle's lawyer stood up in front of a judge and jury and tried to claim that that function and Joshua Bloch's admission that he copied it was evidence of Google's guilt. Basically, he tried to take advantage of their lack of domain knowledge to fool them into thinking this was a real Thing Worth Deliberating. Turns out his ploy failed since the judge knew wtf he was talking about and actually codes. A (flawed) analogy would be if it were a case around the copyright infringement of a book whereby the author, at a new company, copied the phrase "Table of Contents" from a previous novel and pasted it into his new book's table of contents at the head of the page. Anyone with half a brain that understands the domain of writing realizes this is elementary and outside of the scope of what constitutes real, novel IP. Arguing such a point reveals you want to exploit the ignorance of your audience to not know that "Table of Contents" is a phrase used in the industry and obvious to come up with on your own to describe that part of the book. Basically, once the jig is up and the audience knows you're full of it, every claim you make downstream from there ("I know it would take me months to be able to write rangeCheck") makes you look even worse. The reason this is memorable to me is it makes it as transparent as one could hope as to who in the room was arguing based upon reality, and who was arguing to win. For a software company to do this is an embarrassment since we are supposed to be increasing computer literacy not exploit computer illiteracy to our own advantage.
    - raldi 14y ago
davidpayne11 14y ago
And now we can re-tweet at the Florian Mueller dick (the bastard at FOSS patents) how wrong he was. Check that dick's article: http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/05/jury-doesnt-find-google-to-infringe-two.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/05/jury-doesnt-find-google-t...
- pyre 14y ago
  You realize that you're just giving him more publicity, which is what his end-goal is. No one will pay him to be a shill if he doesn't have an audience.
a3d6g2f7 14y ago
This seems like (yet another) suit that never should have been filed to begin with. Everyone lost time, and everyone except the lawyers and the court (court fees) lost money.
- taligent 14y ago
  You're not serious ? This is EXACTLY the type of suits that should be filed. There were legitimate issues to be discussed and it made the entire software industry think about what it means for an API to be copyrighted, defense of software patents etc. This decision has set a precedent that we may not see repeated again. I say it was absolutely worth it.
  - dminor 14y ago
    Actually the API copyright question has not been answered yet - the judge has yet to rule on whether it's copyrightable, and the jury hung on whether it's fair use. This case is not over.
  - a3d6g2f7 14y ago
    But why do you think that? Is it because it will deter future litigation? If yes, does that imply that there is a business advantage to avoiding litigation? What would Alsup say about this case? As a programmer who is also a judge did he think there were really legitimate issues here that needed to be resolved? I guess some see issues, and lack of clarity, where others do not. I see extremely weak claims and a very large legal budget. That's just me. You may be right. If this makes things clearer, then it has value. So should we thank Oracle for bringing the suit? While we're at it, I'd like to thank Burroughs Corp. for all the early precedent they gave us.
Natsu 14y ago
What I want to know now is where we go on the copyright. The judge is taking an incredibly long time working on that. The speculation I've read says that this may be good for Google, but who knows? I saw a comment from Grellas on a prior story that said that the judge has some crazy precedents to deal with in his circuit and they can't freely adopt the Borland case's logic without dealing with them. I'd like to know how the request for briefs on Sony v. Connectix figures into that. Is that case from the same circuit? If so, that would really make me believe that he's working on a pro-Google ruling. After all, it shouldn't be that hard to come up with a finding of infringement. You only have a lot of justification to do if you want to find non-infringement. Finally, I wonder what, if any, the impact of the juror telling us that is was 9-3 in favor of Google will be. Does that help support a finding of fair use or not? That said, I'm glad to hear that Google has been cleared of infringing upon these absurd patents. I just hope they still get invalidated too, so that no one else ever has to worry about them.
grellas 14y ago
A few thoughts on this: Google had pushed for a fall trial date at the earliest but Oracle argued vigorously (and successfully) for an immediate date on grounds that the case was ready with Google only playing for time. To induce the judge to give it an early trial date, Oracle offered to dismiss with prejudice all patents that had been rejected in a final office action by the USPTO subject to reinstatement in the event the PTO reversed itself prior to the start of trial. Trial started on April 16 and, lo and behold, the PTO did reverse itself concerning one significant patent (the '702 patent) such that Oracle would normally have been able to pursue its claims for infringement based on that patent. However, it did so a few days after the trial had started. As a result, that claim wound up being finally dismissed for purposes of this lawsuit. Oracle tried to renege and pushed the judge to reinstate the claim but the judge said no (decision here: (http://www.scribd.com/doc/91307218/Oracle-denied-using-revived-patent-vs-Google)[pdf] http://www.scribd.com/doc/91307218/Oracle-denied-using-reviv...). Thus, Oracle screwed itself as a result of having charged full speed with tomahawk swinging wildly in the air. In pushing aggressively for tactical advantage, it essentially threw away the one patent claim that had any potential for viability (the two patent claims on which it lost at trial were in fact relatively weak, with one of the two patents about to go down before the USPTO and set in any event to expire in December, among other things). Oracle now finds itself in a deep hole. It won a few crumbs in the copyright phase and got skunked on the patent phase. More copyright drama to follow as the judge rules on API copyrightability. Oracle might win on that issue, as it is a tricky one under Ninth Circuit law (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3980642 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3980642), but it then faces a retrial in which the judge would give much more refined instructions on what it means to infringe the SSO of the Java APIs than he gave in the first trial - between that and the (I think, formidable) fair use defense that Google has, it is strictly an uphill fight for Oracle from here on out. (By the way, Google has done a masterful job of arguing the issue of why APIs should not be copyrightable and, for those inclined to read through a superb legal brief on the issues, here it is: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/OraGoogle-1137.pdf http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/OraGoogle-1137.pdf). Oracle may yet rally if a lot of things go its way. I wouldn't bet on it though. Much more likely, in my view, is that the case becomes a testament to what happens when a party makes a high-stakes opportunistic legal grab that goes badly awry. What Larry Ellison set out to justify as Oracle's vindication has instead become Oracle's folly.
DigitalSea 14y ago
We all knew Google would win. Next up the imminent appeal (if Oracle want to get themselves butt hurt a second time). If the jury and judge had ruled that API's were copyrightable, who knows what that could have done to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and any other site that relies on a third party framework, library or piece of code to functionally operate. Oracle are the rotting enterprise dinosaur that refuses to accept evolution and adapt or just die. The patent system is a absolute joke.
- idspispopd 14y ago
  Oracle are unlikely to appeal, especially because it was a jury case. >If the jury and judge had ruled that API's were copyrightable, who knows what that could have done to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and any other site that relies on a third party framework, library or piece of code to functionally operate. The jury did see that Google infringed copyright by implementing the APIs, however this doesn't impact others in the way you've stated because using an API isn't the same as copying someone else's, and even then it was still narrowly defined. >Oracle are the rotting enterprise dinosaur that refuses to accept evolution and adapt or just die. This isn't all true, while I'm certain their motivation was not in the right place to begin with, the case they brought did have merits regarding the fragmentation of java. (As there are similarities to the microsoft case.)
- caf 14y ago
  The question of whether the "Structure, Sequence and Organisation" of the Java API is copyrightable in the ninth circuit is still before the judge. This question is that one that is of most interest to the rest of us, and is the ruling that is most likely to be appealed (no matter which way it goes).
arjn 14y ago
Oh thank goodness ! Finally its over. I hope Oracle learns some kind of lesson from this.
ww520 14y ago
That's good news for the Android and Java community. One less patent roadblock looming over the heads.
T_S_ 14y ago
> Patents and software need to get a divorce before somebody gets hurt. Well said.

723 points by grellas 14y ago

parfe 14y ago

Kudos to the jury. They put a lot of effort into understanding the issue at hand. Based on courtroom reporting, the jury paid attention and they asked clarifying questions while deliberating to make sure they understood. Software patents are a mess. Oracle's arguments were terrible from a CS standpoint (and their expert should be embarrassed). I believe the only issue still on the table is API copyrightability which Judge Aslup will rule on as a matter of law. The jury found for Oracle in that instance because the jury instructions essentially mandated it. I expect Aslup will rule for Google on that claim as well. Oracle's current claim for money is literally for 9 lines of code called rangeCheck (which anyone in a high school intro to java class could write), and 8 test files copied by a subcontractor and never distributed to end users. A certain Oracle paid blogger will still manage to post how Oracle basically got everything it wanted.

pratikjhaveri 14y ago
Who's the paid blogger?
- koenigdavidmj 14y ago
  Florian Mueller. http://www.dailytech.com/Top+AntiAndroid+Blogger+Florian+Mueller+is+Being+Paid+by+Oracle/article24633.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Top+AntiAndroid+Blogger+Florian+Mue...
- nooooooo 14y ago
  Florian Mueller?
- jacquesm 14y ago
  Florian al-Sahaf
- mintplant 14y ago
  Most likely a reference to Florian Mueller, of http://www.fosspatents.com/ http://www.fosspatents.com/ Detail: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/04/19/1357207/florian-mueller-outs-himself-as-oracle-employee http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/04/19/1357207/florian-muell...
  - cooldeal 14y ago
    Is there any evidence that PJ is not a paid blogger herself? At least Florian was honest to declare on his blog that he was paid by Oracle to do some work and his blog might be tainted by that.
    - air 14y ago
      Florian pretended to be a FOSS advocate for a very long time and refused to disclose his clients, when it was clear for all that he was being paid by Microsoft.
      - taligent 14y ago
        And you can't be both ? Or does that mean that I should ignore anyone who is being paid by a company. Because that would be almost everyone, right ?
        air 14y ago
        "And you can't be both ?" His "FOSS advocacy" for the last few years has consistently been solely cheering for every patent and copyright suit against open source software. "Or does that mean that I should ignore anyone who is being paid by a company." Being paid for PR that borders astroturfing and refusing to disclose that is over the line for me.
        Natsu 14y ago
        I did think that he also campaigned against software patents in Europe, though I think there was controversy there, too, concerning his methods.
- shabda 14y ago
  I was referring Florian Mueller, I think.
nknight 14y ago
Unless they stipulated to something I missed, there's actually another very important issue on the table: Fair use. The jury decided Google "infringed", but couldn't agree whether the fair use defense applied. If Alsup rules APIs are not copyrightable, the fair use defense is moot and we're done (barring appeal, which will surely happen), but if he were to go the other way, fair use may have to be re-litigated in front of a new jury.
- parfe 14y ago
  Just saw this tweet from a journalist: Dan Levine ‏@FedcourtJunkie: We all just interviewed juror, who said jury was split 9-3 for google on copyright fair use. Um, wow. https://twitter.com/FedcourtJunkie/status/205370887078285313 https://twitter.com/FedcourtJunkie/status/205370887078285313
  - nknight 14y ago
    "Wow" is right. There's also this interesting gem right after: https://twitter.com/FedcourtJunkie/status/205371711233851392 https://twitter.com/FedcourtJunkie/status/205371711233851392 > Juror said it was his opinion that more tech savvy jurors were less likely to go for limits on openness. Ie they were pro google This really says it all. Ultimately Oracle can only win if the jury is borderline luddite.
    - taligent 14y ago
      Being non tech savvy does not make you a luddite.
      - wtallis 14y ago
        No, but it's getting pretty hard to argue that a randomly selected jury of Northern California citizens should be completely devoid of smartphone owners.
    - alanh 14y ago
      Why is a 9-3 split particularly surprising?
RivieraKid 14y ago
The judge is a programmer by the way: http://www.i-programmer.info/news/193-android/4224-oracle-v-google-judge-is-a-programmer.html http://www.i-programmer.info/news/193-android/4224-oracle-v-...
- monochromatic 14y ago
  Judge, not jury.
- krschultz 14y ago
  That is incredible! It's easy to knock the courts, but I think it's worth remembering that becoming a federal judge is very difficult and most of these guys have impressive backgrounds.

nthitz 14y ago

"$6 billion damages" headlines sell more ads is all

fluidcruft 14y ago
"Oracle loses $6 billion" should sell pretty well, too. To bad it won't happen, though--it would be nice to have some blowback temper jackassery and chest-thumping.
- taligent 14y ago
  "Oracle CEO kills kittens" also. It's equally as accurate and makes just as much sense.

dayjah 14y ago

Great news for Google, Android, and an entire ecosystem. Bad news for my ORCL stock :/

jcdavis 14y ago
ORCL is down 0.4% as of now, vs 1.08% for the NASDAQ, so maybe not?
LockeWatts 14y ago
Why do you have ORCL stock?
- bmelton 14y ago
  Is there a reason he shouldn't have stock in Oracle?
  - andrewem 14y ago
    Some people believe that you should invest in companies at least in part based on whether their actions are broadly good for society: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socially_responsible_investing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socially_responsible_investing Perhaps that's the point of view that LockeWatts is coming from. I certainly would feel weird purchasing stock in certain companies, like tobacco companies, though mutual funds I own probably have some of their stock. The way Oracle's behaving many people might feel similarly about them.
    - bmelton 14y ago
      Despite my terse snarkiness (for which I ought to apologize, I think HN is turning me into an asshole, as I am definitely not 'assuming good faith' on too many posts,) that's what I believed he was implying. If I'd gone on, I would have suggested that Oracle is a for-profit company, and generally tends to act as one would expect them to. They are beholden to their shareholders to maximize value. I could see an argument for disagreeing with the notion of patents in general, and would respect a person for saying "I won't hold stock in Oracle as I feel they leverage the patent sytem, which I don't agree with." What I took issue with was the idea of sitting in judgement of someone else for not sharing those values, and by extension, making the implied assertion that holding stock in Oracle is evil. It should probably be noted that I'm not on my best behavior today, but at least as far as I know, Oracle isn't doing anything clearly evil, like killing children, or worshiping Satan (though I could see the debatability of even those, really). I could also surmise that probably quite a few people sharing the stance of socially responsible investing probably hold stock in Apple, a company that also leverages the patent system, as well as (in my opinion, though I don't intend to debate it until I've 'exhaled the bad air, and inhaled the good') engaging in exploitative work practices via FoxConn and such. All this is of course conjecture, as the grandparent may have had a perfectly good reason for having asked the question that has nothing to do with this, and I am at least trying to allow room for that assumption. Either way, I think it deserves more dialog, which is why I asked the question. Thanks for the post though. I didn't know that there was a term coined for such behavior, so I've learned that at least.

dannyr 14y ago

This post made it to #1 on HN in less than 10 minutes. Is this a record?

mbreese 14y ago
Don't all posts start at #1 immediately, then trail away until they get upvotes? Or is that just how a user sees their own submissions?
- jacquesm 14y ago
  You see it as #1 on the 'newest' page, but not on the 'new' page.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
ChuckMcM 14y ago
No, the instagram buyout was #1/Pg1 less than a minute after it hit /newest :-) I suspect a lot of people (like me) are following this closely so as soon as there is news it gets voted up here. Glad the jury found in Google's favor, I think that was the right call. And I really hope that Judge Alsup finds that APIs are not copywritable, Still waiting on that one.
olalonde 14y ago
I believe it might have been this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742902 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742902 ;)

jacquesm 14y ago

Fantastic news for Google and the rest of the world. And a good thing for the other Larry as well, at least now he has some confirmation that he really isn't god. Next up, the appeal.

pron 14y ago
I don't know. I was kinda hoping Google will license Java for Andorid, and we'll have one Java instead of two.
- wtallis 14y ago
  That's not Google's choice. Sun and Oracle are the ones refusing to allow the Java trademark to be used by an open-source implementation for a mobile platform.
  - wmf 14y ago
    I think Oracle would allow it if the price was right. The problem is that "one Java" probably means Java SE, which means you have to use bloat like JAR files and Swing/AWT, which would make Android less competitive with iOS.
    - pmjordan 14y ago
      Would it really help if someone paid $Nbn for the Java label for some snapshot of Harmony or whatever? Open source software (which is open in spirit, not just by name) is always a moving target. As soon as you fork it, it's no longer covered by the license. And when is it a fork, exactly?
      - wmf 14y ago
        I don't think anybody's talking about a snapshot. During the Sun/Google negotiations there was discussion of an ongoing partnership where Google would be forced to adopt new versions of Java as the JCP released them. Google didn't want the JCP backseat-driving Android, so they declined.

gringomorcego 14y ago

On a sidenote: I think most people should be much more questionable about groklaw. I am big open source and FSF advocate, but I'm not above thinking that groklaw is controlled/funded by a much larger power. I hope it's just a conspiracy theory. But I do think that anonymity works both ways; it can imply that you want to say the truth unencumbered, but it also can imply astroturfing. Just because the wind blows this way doesn't mean it always will.

jasonlotito 14y ago
> but I'm not above thinking that groklaw is controlled/funded by a much larger power. Proof? Anything? This line has been used since the early days of SCO. I've never seen anything resembling proof. Indeed, Groklaw has earned the trust I give them. Do not mistake ignorance for insightfulness.
- ssmall 14y ago
  I really like the blog and its my go to site for legal software news and I don't think there is some kind of higher power backing it but I'm still very careful with everything I read there. I haven't seen any evidence of corporate backing, but there is no attempt to hide bias. Its definitely far from an objective news source.
  - nknight 14y ago
    > Its definitely far from an objective news source. Let me know when you find one.
  - wtallis 14y ago
    What bias? You may be confusing bias with opinion. "Equal time" is not unbiased reporting, and having a clear opinion is not bias, unless your opinion turns out to be consistently wrong.
    - lmm 14y ago
      The editorializing gets tiresome when I just want to find out what happened during the trial. It feels like reading the Daily Mail; you can get actual news from there, but you have to be constantly on your guard against osmosing their opinions.

Nate75Sanders 14y ago

Can someone explain what the practical outcomes are of this verdict? For programmers and companies?

revelation 14y ago
This particular one? Not much. But its good news to hear that a jury isn't to be fooled by mispresenting facts. Oracle literally tried to present dexopt as a dynamic optimizer, because it optimizes for the hardware/software configuration on your smartphone. Thats coming from the makers of the HotSpot VM.
- waqf 14y ago
  I would rather say that Oracle tried to present "dynamic" as a word which refers to what dexopt does. Because there was no dispute over what dexopt does, only over what "dynamic" means.
0x09 14y ago
The all-important conclusion (which has yet to be reached) is to the question of whether APIs can be copyrighted. Up until now, all of our software licensing laws have operated under the assumption that APIs and header files are not copyrightable. At this stage it's expected that the status quo will be maintained, which is good for mostly everyone. If the judge were to rule otherwise, and the rule were to be enforced, many software licenses would need to be adapted, and a lot of messy things start happening for projects that provide compatibility with other APIs. As an example, something like GNUstep couldn't exist.
taligent 14y ago
The outcome for and against would have meant absolutely nothing for programmers and companies. It was all about Oracle extracting licensing fees from Google.
- akmiller 14y ago
  That's not true. Almost all decisions in court are made in light of similar cases that had been tried in the past. Therefore, it stands to reason that any decision made, whether for or against Google, could effect future decisions for companies involved in similar suits. I think, in this particular instance, a decision against Google could have set a terrible precedent.

gruseom 14y ago

FTA plus amen: "Patents and software need to get a divorce before somebody gets hurt. The damage is astounding, and the IP is so puny. There is an imbalance in the legal universe, and it needs fixing."

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

iscrewyou 14y ago

I am not a girl but...yay!

jamestaylor1 14y ago
huh?

gfodor 14y ago

Almost as memorable as the verdict will be the outright shame and absurdity that was the "rangeCheck defense." It made a mockery of the system and was insulting to the judge and jury. "Check upper bound, check lower bound, throw exception. You can't explain that!"

raldi 14y ago
Could you elaborate on that? I'm familiar with the rangeCheck() issue, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say about it.
- gfodor 14y ago
  rangeCheck's implementation is a baby step above "Hello World". Oracle's lawyer stood up in front of a judge and jury and tried to claim that that function and Joshua Bloch's admission that he copied it was evidence of Google's guilt. Basically, he tried to take advantage of their lack of domain knowledge to fool them into thinking this was a real Thing Worth Deliberating. Turns out his ploy failed since the judge knew wtf he was talking about and actually codes. A (flawed) analogy would be if it were a case around the copyright infringement of a book whereby the author, at a new company, copied the phrase "Table of Contents" from a previous novel and pasted it into his new book's table of contents at the head of the page. Anyone with half a brain that understands the domain of writing realizes this is elementary and outside of the scope of what constitutes real, novel IP. Arguing such a point reveals you want to exploit the ignorance of your audience to not know that "Table of Contents" is a phrase used in the industry and obvious to come up with on your own to describe that part of the book. Basically, once the jig is up and the audience knows you're full of it, every claim you make downstream from there ("I know it would take me months to be able to write rangeCheck") makes you look even worse. The reason this is memorable to me is it makes it as transparent as one could hope as to who in the room was arguing based upon reality, and who was arguing to win. For a software company to do this is an embarrassment since we are supposed to be increasing computer literacy not exploit computer illiteracy to our own advantage.
  - raldi 14y ago

davidpayne11 14y ago

And now we can re-tweet at the Florian Mueller dick (the bastard at FOSS patents) how wrong he was. Check that dick's article: http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/05/jury-doesnt-find-google-to-infringe-two.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/05/jury-doesnt-find-google-t...

pyre 14y ago
You realize that you're just giving him more publicity, which is what his end-goal is. No one will pay him to be a shill if he doesn't have an audience.

a3d6g2f7 14y ago

This seems like (yet another) suit that never should have been filed to begin with. Everyone lost time, and everyone except the lawyers and the court (court fees) lost money.

taligent 14y ago
You're not serious ? This is EXACTLY the type of suits that should be filed. There were legitimate issues to be discussed and it made the entire software industry think about what it means for an API to be copyrighted, defense of software patents etc. This decision has set a precedent that we may not see repeated again. I say it was absolutely worth it.
- dminor 14y ago
  Actually the API copyright question has not been answered yet - the judge has yet to rule on whether it's copyrightable, and the jury hung on whether it's fair use. This case is not over.
- a3d6g2f7 14y ago
  But why do you think that? Is it because it will deter future litigation? If yes, does that imply that there is a business advantage to avoiding litigation? What would Alsup say about this case? As a programmer who is also a judge did he think there were really legitimate issues here that needed to be resolved? I guess some see issues, and lack of clarity, where others do not. I see extremely weak claims and a very large legal budget. That's just me. You may be right. If this makes things clearer, then it has value. So should we thank Oracle for bringing the suit? While we're at it, I'd like to thank Burroughs Corp. for all the early precedent they gave us.

Natsu 14y ago

What I want to know now is where we go on the copyright. The judge is taking an incredibly long time working on that. The speculation I've read says that this may be good for Google, but who knows? I saw a comment from Grellas on a prior story that said that the judge has some crazy precedents to deal with in his circuit and they can't freely adopt the Borland case's logic without dealing with them. I'd like to know how the request for briefs on Sony v. Connectix figures into that. Is that case from the same circuit? If so, that would really make me believe that he's working on a pro-Google ruling. After all, it shouldn't be that hard to come up with a finding of infringement. You only have a lot of justification to do if you want to find non-infringement. Finally, I wonder what, if any, the impact of the juror telling us that is was 9-3 in favor of Google will be. Does that help support a finding of fair use or not? That said, I'm glad to hear that Google has been cleared of infringing upon these absurd patents. I just hope they still get invalidated too, so that no one else ever has to worry about them.

grellas 14y ago

A few thoughts on this: Google had pushed for a fall trial date at the earliest but Oracle argued vigorously (and successfully) for an immediate date on grounds that the case was ready with Google only playing for time. To induce the judge to give it an early trial date, Oracle offered to dismiss with prejudice all patents that had been rejected in a final office action by the USPTO subject to reinstatement in the event the PTO reversed itself prior to the start of trial. Trial started on April 16 and, lo and behold, the PTO did reverse itself concerning one significant patent (the '702 patent) such that Oracle would normally have been able to pursue its claims for infringement based on that patent. However, it did so a few days after the trial had started. As a result, that claim wound up being finally dismissed for purposes of this lawsuit. Oracle tried to renege and pushed the judge to reinstate the claim but the judge said no (decision here: (http://www.scribd.com/doc/91307218/Oracle-denied-using-revived-patent-vs-Google)[pdf] http://www.scribd.com/doc/91307218/Oracle-denied-using-reviv...). Thus, Oracle screwed itself as a result of having charged full speed with tomahawk swinging wildly in the air. In pushing aggressively for tactical advantage, it essentially threw away the one patent claim that had any potential for viability (the two patent claims on which it lost at trial were in fact relatively weak, with one of the two patents about to go down before the USPTO and set in any event to expire in December, among other things). Oracle now finds itself in a deep hole. It won a few crumbs in the copyright phase and got skunked on the patent phase. More copyright drama to follow as the judge rules on API copyrightability. Oracle might win on that issue, as it is a tricky one under Ninth Circuit law (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3980642 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3980642), but it then faces a retrial in which the judge would give much more refined instructions on what it means to infringe the SSO of the Java APIs than he gave in the first trial - between that and the (I think, formidable) fair use defense that Google has, it is strictly an uphill fight for Oracle from here on out. (By the way, Google has done a masterful job of arguing the issue of why APIs should not be copyrightable and, for those inclined to read through a superb legal brief on the issues, here it is: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/OraGoogle-1137.pdf http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/OraGoogle-1137.pdf). Oracle may yet rally if a lot of things go its way. I wouldn't bet on it though. Much more likely, in my view, is that the case becomes a testament to what happens when a party makes a high-stakes opportunistic legal grab that goes badly awry. What Larry Ellison set out to justify as Oracle's vindication has instead become Oracle's folly.

DigitalSea 14y ago

We all knew Google would win. Next up the imminent appeal (if Oracle want to get themselves butt hurt a second time). If the jury and judge had ruled that API's were copyrightable, who knows what that could have done to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and any other site that relies on a third party framework, library or piece of code to functionally operate. Oracle are the rotting enterprise dinosaur that refuses to accept evolution and adapt or just die. The patent system is a absolute joke.

idspispopd 14y ago
Oracle are unlikely to appeal, especially because it was a jury case. >If the jury and judge had ruled that API's were copyrightable, who knows what that could have done to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and any other site that relies on a third party framework, library or piece of code to functionally operate. The jury did see that Google infringed copyright by implementing the APIs, however this doesn't impact others in the way you've stated because using an API isn't the same as copying someone else's, and even then it was still narrowly defined. >Oracle are the rotting enterprise dinosaur that refuses to accept evolution and adapt or just die. This isn't all true, while I'm certain their motivation was not in the right place to begin with, the case they brought did have merits regarding the fragmentation of java. (As there are similarities to the microsoft case.)
caf 14y ago
The question of whether the "Structure, Sequence and Organisation" of the Java API is copyrightable in the ninth circuit is still before the judge. This question is that one that is of most interest to the rest of us, and is the ruling that is most likely to be appealed (no matter which way it goes).

arjn 14y ago

Oh thank goodness ! Finally its over. I hope Oracle learns some kind of lesson from this.

ww520 14y ago

That's good news for the Android and Java community. One less patent roadblock looming over the heads.

T_S_ 14y ago

> Patents and software need to get a divorce before somebody gets hurt. Well said.