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Well, I got the distinct impression (though it may be colored by hindsight and the journalists it was filtered through), that Oracle originally thought the pate
by magicalist 14y ago
Well, I got the distinct impression (though it may be colored by hindsight and the journalists it was filtered through), that Oracle originally thought the patent portion of the case contained the real offenses, with the copyright arguments more limited (and restricted to just code copying, which I recall they were fairly vague with at first, implying many more instances of direct copying than there was).
It was only as the patents were knocked off one by one that the copyright portion of the suit became their major complaint and what they were pinning expectations and their hopes to.
- bad_user 14y agoNo, Oracle was betting more on copyright, because copyright protections are much stronger than patents. Here are some big differences: (1) copyright lasts longer (2) copyright infringement is easier to prove (3) in most cases having the copyright of something is indisputable On the other hand patents ... (1) are often discovered to be invalid (many "inventions" are unpatentable) (2) the monopoly lasts for only 20 years and in this industry most worthwhile things have been invented before the nineties (3) there are huge amounts of prior art (4) patent infringement is hard to prove If anything, this is really great news, because if Oracle could claim the copyright-ability of Java APIs, then our industry would never be the same.
- einhverfr 14y agoIn a recent case an appeals court in the US noted that something like 60% of patents that were ever challenged in court were eventually invalidated. It is great news, I agree.