USPTO Rejects Many of Oracle's Android Claims 154
sfcrazy writes "In yet another setback for Oracle, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected 17 of 21 claims associated with one of the patents in Java that Oracle asserted Google had violated with Android. Groklaw reports, 'In the reexamination of U.S. Patent 6192476 the USPTO has issued an office action in which it rejects 17 of the patent's 21 claims.'"
Re:Liability (Score:5, Informative)
Why not? Doctors are held personally liable for their mistakes.
Hahahahah seriously, you believe that?
Preface: my wife is a doctor.
My wife never even SEEs her malpractice insurance bill, the group she works for pays it. Second, assuming they kill a man, intentionally, and its proven in court, the absolute WORST thing that happens to them ... they can't practice medicine again ... IN THAT STATE, they just go somewhere else. Insurance pays the bill. They get boarded in the new state, and go one continuing to be a shitty doctor. Maybe they can't practice in California, because they bother to look at things like that, but thats just California, no body else does (well, no body else where you'd actually want to live, North Dakota and those states might, never bothered looking). The feds really don't give a flying fuck, the state boards are the ones that pull licenses.
Doctors are no more liable than I am if you shoot your wife. They are supposed to be, but theory and reality are entirely different in most cases, especially this one.
Doctors are even less liable than drivers. Drivers of cars are required to have insurance as well, but you're a lot more likely to go to jail for doing something stupid in a car than any doctor.
I've seen doctors get their license revoked for being complete scumbags in our state, literally move their office 2 blocks down the street, to the other side of the state line, and open up for business a week later. We're talking about a doctor who prescribed drugs at levels that were unacceptable to any other doctor, gave out pain pills like there was no tomorrow (I know people who have signed prescription pads from the guy so they could refill themselves.), put people on long term IV antibiotics and destroy their bodies in various ways, and flat out lie about all of it, with video and audio taped evidence ...
The ONLY, and I do mean ONLY reason he lost his license? The BlueCross and BlueShield were tired of paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient every month. Not because of all the bad shit he was doing, not because he was hurting people, but because the insurance company of patients didn't want to pay anymore.
The idea that doctors are liable is about as funny as the idea that politicians are liable for what they do.
Re:What damages has Oracle suffered? (Score:2, Informative)
Sun/Oracle gives java away for free. Even if Google has infringed a patent, how has that resulted in any loss of money to Oracle?
Java for mobile devices has always required a paid license. (not free, never was and still isn't)