More Oracle Patents Declared Invalid 150
sfcrazy writes "The validity of another Oracle patent has become doubtful in the dispute with Google about the infringement of Java patents and copyrights on Android devices. The US Patent Office and Trademark Office (USPTO) has provisionally declared all 24 claims of patent number 6,125,447 as being invalid. The USPTO based its decision on a patent that had been used in another case. This patent was granted in 1994 – three years before Sun filed its Java patent application. The US patent office also considered two publications released in 1996 as evidence that Sun's described method for protecting applications via 'protection domains' was anticipated by 'prior art.'"
Re:which shows the USPTO is incompetent (Score:5, Informative)
Abandon general prior art and go on first to file?
There appears to be a common misconception that adoption in the United States of the more common "first to file" rule will end the role of prior art in determining what is patent-worthy. But as I understand it, a "first to file" rule affects only interference (patent application vs. patent application) disputes, not novelty (patent vs. prior art) disputes.
Re:copyright infringement? (Score:2, Informative)
As far as I know there were only testing classes that were decompiled and the decompiled Java code was stored in the test folders of the Android code repository with an Apache license wrongly auto-pasted at the head of them all. They were never shipped with Android OS, but may have been downloaded and used by Android developers. There may be some liability on Google but it is not directly on any shipping Android OS and is not likely to be a big enough infringement problem to deal a blow to Google. The patents are key to Oracle's case.
Re:which shows the USPTO is incompetent (Score:4, Informative)
All USPTO examiners must be US citizens. Many are naturalized, yes, but they're not "foreigners".
Under W, the USPTO hired thousands of additional examiners. Any underfunding was the result of Congress repeatedly raiding the USPTO's collected fees to spend them on other non-patent-related things (military, entitlements, blame whatever you want).
trademark (Score:5, Informative)
"other than giving it a name that doesn't sound like Java it is the SAME SHIT that MSFT pulled in the 90s. I guess if old Bill would have called it a Capuchin it would have been cool?"
Yes, it would have been cool. The MS case was about trademark, not software patents.