Did Google Knowingly Violate Java Patents? 148
jfruhlinger writes "Opponents of software patenting have been rather heartened by recent developments in the Oracle-Google lawsuit, which have seemed to indicate that Oracle's patent case is weakening. But now the judge in the case has some sharp questions for Google, given that Google tried to negotiate with Sun over the patents in question before going on to develop Android without them."
waiting for details (Score:5, Insightful)
may have been a simple "we see you have patented xyz, would you consider our doing abc a violation, and if so, what's licensing going to cost?"
answer may have been along the lines of "pretty much anything you do we may try to sue you for, so you'd be better off paying us a ton of money upfront now". "OK, no thanks, we'll take our chances in court."
Or it may have been something completely different. But that's just my guess.
Re:waiting for details (Score:5, Informative)
where was the "florian mueller contributed to the article" and it's completely unreliable warning?
This isn't about groklaw, but nothing shows for the judge asking anything other than telling Oracle to explain where it's magic numbers came from [groklaw.net]. Oh and potentially google seeking discovery sanctions on oracle but it has not been raised by google. [groklaw.net] That's about it. If this had actually linked groklaw somewhere, which it didn't. There is no "danger" for google in any form, nor did the judge imply it was plausible that google did anything. Where does TFS or the article make that shit up?
The only person who filed today was google, not the judge. So where does this shit come from? This article is fud.
Re:waiting for details (Score:4, Funny)
Can I convince you to buy this bridge I'm selling by hinting at it using a question?
What if I cobble together a tiny tidbit of info from groklaw with a really inflammatory headline, will slashdot publish it?
I hope Oracle's lawyers get fired for this case.
is robmalda a terrorist axe murderer? (Score:3)
its a legitimate question.
think about the last time you saw robmalda.
now think about the last time someone got murdered with an axe.
coincidence?
you see, it all goes back to Woodrow Wilson...
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oblig (Score:3)
You decide!
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Uh...
"In reading the Daubert briefing, it appears possible that early on Google recognized that it would infringe patents protecting at least part of Java, entered into negotiations with Sun [Microsystems] to obtain a license for use in Android, then abandoned the negotiations as too expensive, and pushed home with Android without any license at all," Alsup wrote in the letter filed in US District
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I think the point is that if you google for the words in the letter, they don't show up anywhere except the article. I don't really understand this stuff but since other articles filed by the court are available on the web, wouldn't this letter also be there? Maybe I should use a different search engine (ha ha!). Groklaw also hasn't reported this letter either.
Furthermore, doing more searches I can't find anyone else reporting this letter except TFA (although a *lot* of sites have reprinted it or linked
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if you google for the words in the letter,
Those sly bastards!
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because as we all know, you're a troll who apparently doesnt' even know she doesn't write the articles there anymore for the most part, and that's why you trolled your post pretty spectacularly.
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s/Just another fucktard SCO investor/Just another fucktard Florian Mueller sockpuppet/
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wait what who. Me, or who I replied to?
I don't want to miss your snark and/or assume it is directed my way if it isn't.
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Recent patent law rulings have made staying supposedly, deliberately ignorant of what the competition does in the same field less and less of a defense. Depending on just what the questions were, we may well be seeing the capstone case where several district courts have, between them, created an interpretation where the defending side is always "damned if they do, damned if they don't" regardless of the equities of the situation. If the questions were anything like you suggested, expect this one to be the c
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may have been a simple "we see you have patented xyz, would you consider our doing abc a violation...
That's my guess too. It's just another sign that the patent system is broken when you don't even know if you're violating a patent or not.
My Opinion... (Score:3)
Is that, given that patents are uh subjective, AND that Sun was quite a nice company to open source stuff (that's the impression I have), I think Google said:
"Hmm, if we do X, we might hit on a patent and get a lawsuit, lets see if we can clear it off with Sun, since they're reasonable".
Then when Oracle bought Sun, pretty more for the patents, they decided to take a risk.
That's my opinion on this matter. I don't know anything internally.
Don't be evil... (Score:2)
If Sun was such a nice company, it became more incumbent, not less, for Google to send a few $million their way, don't you think?
Sun open sourced Java, but not for mobile.
Actually, even if they had, if Google wanted to truly be "not evil", they would have found a way to give some money to a staggering, but highly innovative company.
The only problem with that would be shareholders who would whine, "Why are you giving free money away when you don't have to?"
The fig leaf to protect Google from the "not increa
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Is there a specific place where Sun said they exclude Java on mobile stuff?
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ob disc: I used to work at sun.
I heard mr java himself give a talk (I think it was at the java 10th anniv party at the santa clara campus, a few yrs back) and he seemed to say that mobile java (something about south america, too, I didn't quite get that) was a HUGE thing for sun. almost the reason for java to exist (the way he talked about java on mobile phones).
bonus: I found 2 photos that I took from that event:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/221/472512518_4f70840cd2_z.jpg [flickr.com]
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/20 [flickr.com]
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I once heard 'Mr. Java' talk about how Oak was going to run on television remote controls and make them better. It may be that one of the reasons for Android's success is that Google was finally able to build a very good Java runtime for mobile. Or perhaps the hardware just finally got powerful enough, but it's a far cry from the microcontroller or 'java processor' design concept.
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I once heard 'Mr. Java' talk about how Oak was going to run on television remote controls and make them better.
Well, if it weren't for Android I'm pretty sure we still wouldn't have Java-based TV remotes [android.com]...
Re:Don't be evil... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is pretty generally know if you've been following Java, but since you ask:
The Java Runtime license [redhat.com] states:
"Software embedded in or bundled with industrial control systems, wireless mobile telephones, wireless handheld devices, kiosks, TV/STB, Blu-ray Disc devices, telematics and network control switching equipment, printers and storage management systems, and other related systems are excluded from this definition and not licensed under this Agreement."
As for the open source release, that's covered under the Java Language Spec patent grant.
That only covers fully-conforming versions, not sub or supersets.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Java_and_patents [swpat.org]
It was Sun's intention to give Java away on the desktop, and charge for embedded use.
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Thanks.
VM architecture (Score:2)
Android uses a register based VM instead of a stack based VM (for performance reason), so I'm not sure it's that easy for theam to stay clean.
Probably (Score:1, Insightful)
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If I'm an inventor why should I have to build a factory? Not everyone wants to be an end-to-end mega-corporation. Maybe even a mega-corporation invests a lot of time and money into something and discovers it's not a product they want to sell but is still valuable and could be offered by someone else?
I have an application that I wrote that we aren't using at the company any more. That doesn't mean I can just take that application and start selling it. My employer spent a lot of money on development.
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patents != copyright.
and presumably your former employer broke even on the software they have no use for anymore? they'd have budgeted for that, right? if so, then any patents are a potential extra revenue stream, but certainly not the incentive to invent the software.
it would be similar to charging your local council for the privilege of collecting your garbage, because you have rights over that garbage.
did you perform a patent search before writing it? (Score:3)
because more likely than not, some of your code violates someones patents, and they could sue your company.
you thought that R&D was a positive, but now you could go bankrupt!
better to not invent anything at all.
yay capitalism.
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because more likely than not, some of your code violates someones patents, and they could sue your company.
its true; and as time goes on, it gets truer, still.
I've heard this said (forgot who said it, but he was a smart man) that a real reason why companies don't opensource things like drivers is because it only makes it easier for other trolls to look at their code and find, via coincidence or not, come patent violation.
so companies are *motivated* to not release source since it does give them protection.
i
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So with no intention of making money from it yourself, if others use it as core technology to an item they sell, you should reap rewards?
Sure, why not?
If only the inventor of plastic patented that idea.
He did [wikipedia.org].
Though you do have a point here in that many patents today (esp. software ones) are overly broad. With plastics, what's patented is the particular compound, not the general idea of polymerization. In case of Oracle, they patented some very generic VM implementation techniques. That they shouldn't be able to do so is a reasonable argument to make.
Does this mean every peice of Java software written should owe Oracle money?
No, since the language itself isn't patented. Most high-performance Java VMs, however, likely violate some of their patents.
Whatever happened to the idea of 'for the beneift of society'.
For the benefit of
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Bytecode is just an intermediate representation for Java. Running Java source code involves several steps:
The difference between Sun's JVM and Dalvik is that the JVM uses a stack-based IR (Java bytecode) while Dalvik uses a register-based IR. Both are doing similar optimisations and transforms
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No, it's not. It might still violate Oracle's patents, though - so far as I know, they're not really specific to Java bytecode.
This, by the way, means that other JIT-enabled VMs may need to worry, too.
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Whatever happened to the idea of 'for the beneift of society'.
People realized they can't go to the supermarket and tell the clerk they are taking this food 'for the benefit of society' since they did all their work 'for the benefit of society' and have no money.
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I don't necessarily believe IP/patents/etc should last as long as they do; 5 years tops and after that, public domain. however, the system has been so abused and corrupted that it's more harm than good at this point.
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Yes, because companies like Oracle are just tricked into lawsuits by lawyers so that they can lose money. Uhh, yeah you're full of shit.
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Yeah, the suit against MS was one billion dollar lawsuit that geeks cheered on. The reason for the suit was MS fracturing Java.
Of course, that's what Google's doing with Android, as well.
The reason it gets a pass is simply because it's Google.
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Apps developed for the platform are not meant to be ported to any other Java runtime environments.
And apps written for MS's J++ weren't meant to be ported to any other Java runtime environment either. That was rather the point. And so, Sun sued them for it.
Seriously, did you even read what you were writing before posting it?
The only thing Google is doing differently is not calling it Java.
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Don't forget that those lawyers are HIRED by people who create things of real value in order to protect it.
In this articular case, they're not hired to protect anything other than a potential revenue stream through patent extortion (which is of course the only thing that has real value to Oracle).
groklaw has good coverage on this one (Score:5, Informative)
"Oracle v. Google - Google Moves to Supplement Its Invalidity Defenses"
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110712074100640 [groklaw.net]
Least expensive (Score:1)
Google probably thought that the patents were not valid, but thought that if it were least expensive to license them, they would do it that way. When it wasn't the least expensive way to do it, they chose to proceed and litigate.
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This is damaging in the fact that Google knew that there were patent issues since they tried to seek licensing for them. If they then later claim that there are no patent issues, it shoots a big hole in their defense.
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Most likely Google asked Sun how much money it would cost to license the patent for X because Google had no possible way of knowing if something would violate that patent or not, obviously the price of "protection money" on something that may or may not be
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In a world where the wheel, teasing a cat with a laser pointer, and swinging side to side on a swingset are patented, just getting up in the morning has potential patent issues.
There are many good reasons for Google to want to make sure their non-infringing work doesn't end up dragged in to court anyway. Apparently the "insurance" was way too expensive.
How does that in any way damage their case?
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Probably due to the fact that they are being sued for infringement? Just a guess mind you....
A court can look at facts like these to determine intent, and if it does turn out that Google attempted to get licensing on the very items they are being sued on, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this will damage their case.
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The court could look at intent if it mattered to the case, but it can't just spin stories of guilt, it would have to have some factual evidence that the innocent interpretation isn't the true case. There isn't any that we know of.
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You're also ignoring the other possibility: that failing to license said patents, Google then intentionally worked around the patent claims (by inventing Dalvik, etc, etc).
That's exactly what I thought: if they had a license, why would they need Dalvik? As far as I understand, Dalvik's sole purpose is to avoid the JVM.
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As far as I understand, Dalvik's sole purpose is to avoid the JVM
Nope. Dalvik's aim is to provide a more modern intermediate representation. Java bytecode is not that different to Smalltalk-80 VM bytecode, which, in turn, inherits a lot from P-Code. P-Code was created in 1966 and was the state of the art in compiler technology back then. It let you ship Pascal code in an intermediate form that could be trivially compiled for the target architecture.
Like P-Code and Smalltalk-80 bytecode, Java bytecode is stack-based. This makes it very difficult to do various kind
Bench Litigation (Score:1)
A better question (Score:3, Interesting)
Does Larry Ellison murder prostitutes? (Score:2, Troll)
its a good question, think about the last time you saw larry ellison.
now think about the last time you saw a murdered prostitute.
coincidence?
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its a good question, think about the last time you saw larry ellison.
now think about the last time you saw a murdered prostitute.
coincidence?
Before using the "correlation/causation" meme, thanks for assuming I'm a good guy that never saw a murdered prostitute. While true in my case, it isn't necessarily to be so for all the readers of /. that never saw one of the two but actually saw the other - in such cases, your "coincidence question" will not even reach the "correlation/causation" stage.
I'm not sure however what you intend to suggest. I'm afraid of a suggestion on the line that "being a dreamer, one wishes that Larry Ellison would actually
studies have shown (Score:3)
that when a prostitute is murdered, someone has to have been the murderer.
critics point out that sometimes people are murdered without anyone actually murdering them.
(i.e. my elaboration is that headlines and news stories can be really, really wrong)
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(i.e. my elaboration is that headlines and news stories can be really, really wrong)
Yes, you are right in this respect, even when you use totally improper argumentation.
that when a prostitute is murdered, someone has to have been the murderer.
Correct. You don't need studies (do they actually exist?), the simple definition of murder [wikipedia.org] is enough.
critics point out that sometimes people are murdered without anyone actually murdering them.
Those critics must be wrong. The murderer by the very definition of the term [wikipedia.org] has to be a person, thus someone (as opposed to anyone/nobody).
However, what is the relation of your elaboration (thanks for it) with my post? The post expressing the wish that Google chose to go ahead with Dalvik after, upon studies, they discover
is decora an unimaginative hack? (Score:2)
I'm Jim James. Next on Talk Town, we will have people on from both sides of the issue to discuss it. get your calls in! and now we pause for this break.
And we're back at Talk Town. the topic today is decora: unimaginative hack? we have EJ Jones from the Washington Center for Economic Progress, and Stavai Smith from the Institute for Freedom and Governance. Thank you both for being here.
- Thank you
-- Thank you
EJ why dont you go first. Is decora a worthless, mindless hack, filling up the internet with repetit
Agreed, a very good question. (Score:1)
An even better question (Score:2)
"Patents, eh?", he asked him knowingly.
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Just more Florian Mueller FUD (Score:2)
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Well, shit, who needs a court system when "Barbara, not Barbie" of Slashdot has dismissed the case?
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No! (Score:2)
I agree with you on all issues save for the fact that, ``...Dalvik does run Java...``
Since this is Slashdot, the more accurate thing to say would be to mention,
``Dalvik runs programs written in the Java programming language...``
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Dalvik is not Java, which is an insurmountable hurdle.
Which means jack and shit. The patent, if held to be valid, in no way is only applicable if the implementation is of the Java language.
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google sought a green light from sun
Not surprising they didn't get it, since sun's light is white.
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The sun's light is yellow. Thus there is a question whhther or not there was a patent violation
I don't think so. (Score:2)
I think they just tried to work around the only profitable aspect of Java. I'm sure if they thought they would be liable and have to pay for it, they would have just used something else. Not to mention that using Java was more like doing Sun a favor than anything else, despite the implementation. It kept Java relevant while Sun was dying. Google also helped popularize OpenOffice.
I think Sun should have filed the suit before being bought by Oracle. I've heard arguments that they couldn't afford to or whateve
seems the wrong way round (Score:2)
Isn't the more logical interpretation that google saw that java already had a history in the mobile space, and rather than re-invent the wheel decided it would be cheaper and simpler to use a java VM, and went to sun to licence the patents needed to do that. That failed, so they said 'alrighty then' and wrote the clean-room dalvik VM which differs from java in a lot of key design decisions. Isn't that how the patent system is supposed to work?
If they'd tried to licence the java patents AFTER they'd written
Slashdot trolled by Florian Mueller once again (Score:1)
Overall, Alsup seems to be increasing the pressure on both Oracle and Google to settle, according to Florian Mueller, a blogger who closely tracks open-source software legal matters.
"Yesterday's order concerning the possibility of a staywas bad news for Oracle," Mueller said via e-mail. "Today's notice looks like a clear signal to Google that they should recognize their obligation to pay. But the problem is that Oracle's demands are apparently way above anything that Google could pay without changing its Android business model from 'free-of-charge' to 'fee-based.' I don't know whether Oracle will reduce its demands substantially in order to enable a near-term settlement."
Slashdot's bogeymen (Score:2)
There's an irritating trend in Slashdot discussions to cite bogeymen to dismiss any news that may be negative toward some protagonist of the community, such as Google. "Oh, there's a statement from Florian Mueller, so the entire article is FUD even though the judge really did ask those questions in his letter. I'm not listening, la-la-la."
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OK, you might not like the source, for whatever reason. But:
That's the
Patent "First Post" (Score:2)
Is it just me? (Score:2)
Ben Franklin is smarter than you, or I, and.... (Score:2)
...DEFINITELY smarter than the corporate trolls making this patent mess.
"... as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
How his ideas didn't come to more fully pervade our nascent and now crumbling and corrupt democracy, I shall never know.
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patents only serve the interests of the individual who owns them.
On the other hand, the removal of patents would probably de-motivate people from releasing inventions at all.
We need some middle ground, most likely in the form of a maximum patent term of only a couple of years so that the inventor gets a head start, but no more...and after 2 years, everyone benefits.
Why should everyone benefit? because technological advancement is a higher goal than just getting rich.
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Agreed. Both copyright and patent should be limited to no more than 5 years. If you can't make money by then, go and invent something else you lazy bastard!
Shakedown (Score:2)
need a tag (Score:1)
All Smart Phones Infiringe (Score:4, Interesting)
Nobody sells a high tech product without knowing that it infringes on some patent you don't own or have license to!!!
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY that ships a smart phone today, KNOWS that they are infringing on a patent held by someone else!
There are over 50 companies that hold at least 300 patents each covering smart phone technology. Who knows how many companies hold patents over various manufacturing technologies used. There are thousands of patents out there on many very basic software techniques. IBM, Motorola, HP, Intel, Apple, HTC, Samsung, Google, Microsoft, all hold thousands of patents that more or less apply to Smart phones and computers. And there are tons more. These are the guys that produce products. Many, many patents are held by trolls that produce nothing but lawsuits.
How then can any company hope to build a product that is free and clear of patents?
If knowing you might have patent issues means something significant, then ban all high tech products! Including frankly most medicines. Including every modern car. Including every T.V. Including ever significant piece of software!
In light of this rather obvious fact, what is the point this Judge is trying to make? How is any product any different?
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I wouldn't say KNOWs. Software patent claims are vague and general that violations are open to interpretation.
Also there are so many software patents out there that have 50-60 claims where most claims that are obvious. You could implement something and that would violate a patent you didn't know existed.
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But a smart phone isn't just about software patents, as my post indicates. You have hardware patents, business patents, process patents, software patents all at play in smart phones.
You are going to tell me that they didn't know they had to infringe on some of these?
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I wouldn't assume that. There's definitely a patent thicket related to cell phone technology, but for the most part all of the companies involved have cross licensed all their patents with each other. You see battles like this come up when you get a company (Oracle) that isn't a cellphone company and thus not part of the cross-licensing that wants a piece of the action, or you see it when companies (like Apple vs Samsung) decide they can't effectively compete and try to find areas in their portfolio that ar
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Infringing is infringing. As you point out, not having a product in the game is an advantage.
But how does this defend the system?
How can any new companies (without patent portfolios) enter the market?
Lastly, knowing that your product infringes on patents isn't the same as knowing it infringes on particular patents. The latter would be required for triple penalties.
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I totally agree that it's completely impossible to create a product without infringing patents, especially software patents. The whole system is absurd.
Still, the issue here is whether Google knew about the _specific_ patents that Oracle is suing about. That's the point the judge is trying to make.
Hopefully the whole thing will be irrelevant if the patents are shown to be invalid (Google found lots of prior art).
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Google very likely knew about the patents, but in this game the particular patents are of little issue. Most likely, they just wanted a broad license to any patents Sun had, and didn't do any study of particular patents. I am not sure why they would, as that would just increase their liability, and would not have helped them anyway.
It's probably just about willfulness (Score:2)
This line of questioning might have nothing at all to do with whether any of the patents are actually valid or infringed. It might just have to do with whether, if it was done, it was done willfully.
OTOH, it may be the judge's strategy to try to get google thinking about possible treble damages. He's probably trying for anything that might lead to a sooner settlement and cut his workload.
Trivial answer (Score:2)
I think that Google has been very creative to keep the language syntax and the libraries almost identical (they are both patent free) and to not copy any other aspects of Java.
If a real patent (not trivial,
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Is there such a thing as a `real` software patent?
if it is can I get a `real` garbage collector to clean up my room once in a while?
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That's right - any GPL program will just run its binary on any CPU, and has the vast majority of developers skilled in coding for it.
Because a Linux kernel = GPL apps.
You just made everyone dumber with your comment.
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What's not funny is that you're wrong, and don't even bother to give a reason while you're being wrong.
But maybe you're just evidence of how that comment made everyone dumber.
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Classic Patent Extortion (Score:2)
If this judge were honest, they'd see that until they invalidated the patents, Google was forced to negotiate to license them first. Google is just trying to do some "progress in science and the useful arts" despite those patents. But patent holders like Sun have no obligation to allow their government-issued monopoly to be used for progress. In fact they practically always obstruct progress by others until their price is paid.
Just because you offer to give some gangster your wallet when they have their gun
Negotiating doesn't mean the patents are valid (Score:2)
It seems to me that the court shouldn't use some negotiation against them. We live in a day and age where it's often cheaper to pay off an invalid patent claim than to try to fight it, so every company has to figure out what it's going to cost them to make a deal up front.
It seems to me, that's not an admission by the defendant that they thought the patent would be infringed, or was valid - simply that they were trying to decide if it was worth fighting or not.
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"I'm going to Disneyland!"
Re:Judicial mess (Score:4, Insightful)
As sound as legal analysis from an anonymous poster on pro-Google Slashdot must be, I'm afraid you're not as persuasive as you think you are. What's happening is that the judge is pressuring both parties to reach a settlement, which is probably what's going to happen.
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As sound as legal analysis from an anonymous poster on pro-Google Slashdot must be
You are on Slashdot and are obviously not "pro-Google". There are many others like you here. Please get off of the persecution complex soapbox.
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You're saying it's OK to break the law if you have investigated the legal circumstances, and decided that upholding the law was too much hazzle / not profitable?
Entering negotiations by itself is not an admission of guilt, but if other evidence suggests that they are in fact guilty, it's an admission of malicious intent.
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The reason this is relevant is that it showed that they may have knowingly violated the patents. If the patent is found to be valid and they are found to be infringing it is far worse for Google if it can be shown that they did it knowingly instead of simply by accident.