Oracle's Android Claims Cut By 98%

tomhudson writes "Groklaw is reporting that Oracle was ordered to reduce its claims against Google from 132 to 3. In a further ruling, the judge has ordered that 129 of those claims will be permanently barred against all past and current products. Additionally, the judge has asked both sides if, in their opinion, after they have reduced the number of claims, a trial is still worth holding, or if the case is now moot."

Re:a judge with common sense

[Eggplant62]

If only this judge had been in charge of the cases in SCO vs The World, that nonsense would have been done in 2004. It's easy to see that this fellow has a clue here.

Re:not cool

[TheRaven64]

Way off-topic here, but 'communism has never been practiced' is another way of saying that it doesn't work, since it has been attempted a lot of times. And it's not even true. Communism works quite well, the problem is that it doesn't scale. Once you get beyond about 50 people in your society, communism starts to develop serious issues.

Re:a judge with common sense

[chemicaldave]

Hold your horses. He's not reducing the number of claims because he thinks the claims themselves are ridiculous. He's reducing the number of claims because the number is ridiculous and not able to be tried reasonably.

Currently, there are 132 claims from seven patents asserted in this action, and there are hundreds of prior art references in play for invalidity defenses. This is too much. The following schedule will ensure that only a triable number of these items — three claims and eight prior art references — are placed before the jury in October, all others to be forsaken.

Do you have any idea how long a trial would last with 132 claims and hundreds of prior art references to sort out?

Re:not cool

[mcvos]

Patents have the same problem. They may work well with single inventors inventing steam engines and telephones, but it doesn't scale well to multinational pharma and software companies.