Oracle Ordered To Lower Damages Claim On Google 204
CWmike writes "Oracle has been ordered to lower its multibillion-dollar claim for damages in its patent infringement lawsuit against Google and its Android operating system, court papers show. Oracle's expert 'overreached' in concluding that Google owed up to $6.1 billion in damages for alleged infringement of Oracle's Java patents, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup said Friday in a sternly written order. The 'starting point' for Oracle's damages claim should be $100 million, adjusted up and down for various factors, he said. At the same time, Google was wrong to assert that its advertising revenue is not related to the value of Android and should therefore not be a part of Oracle's damages, the judge wrote. He also warned Google, 'there is a substantial possibility that a permanent injunction will be granted' if it is found guilty of infringement."
Language (Score:3, Interesting)
What are the chances that Google will:
1) alter the way the Dalvik VM works such that the same source will execute differently, although producing the same results, so that app developers code continues to work, or
2) launch a new language for developing Android apps, but with a conversion tool to take existing source and turn it into whatever the new language looks like (some other variant on c/java/whatever...lets face it they're all practically identical nowadays)?
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Wouldn't it be funny if Google started supporting Qt Quick / QML as an alternative to Davik and then encouraged QML app development? Google would end up fighting Nokia and Microsoft in the market using Nokia's technology.
I know it isn't going to happen, but there is a QML implementation supported on Android.
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When has Google ever successfully done something like this? Their products consist almost entirely on either products they bought (like Android) or by utilizing the works of others (Linux, WebKit).
Coming up with a drop-in replacement for Dalvik (or significantly altering it) is nowhere near as easy as your question implies, nor is it something Google has shown themselves proficient at doing.
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Actually, writing a VM that is as good as Dalvik (which isn't particularly impressive today, as far as optimizations go - nowhere near JVM, for example) is not hard. The problem is doing that in such a way that it doesn't infringe on Oracle's patents. That is very tricky.
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That's exactly my point. The OP is talking about them completely replacing it with something new (or altered significantly), not just making a new-but-compatible VM.
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But this isn't an issue of compatibility. Even if they replace it with something very different, so long as it has a "virtual instruction set" (i.e. some form of bytecode) and JIT compilation, it'll be infringing. And I find it hard to come up with a VM design without bytecode - it's been around for several decades for a good reason - and I don't see how it could be made efficient without JIT.
About the only workaround I can think of is to AOT-compile to native code, either on the phone (e.g. when app is ins
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I don't think simply being JIT is the basis of Oracle's claims against Google.
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I've already posted this link in a comment in another thread, but let me repeat this - it's one of the patents in question:
http://www.google.com/patents/about/6910205_Interpreting_functions_utilizing.html?id=U-4UAAAAEBAJ [google.com]
What is claimed is:
1. In a computer system, a method for increasing the execution speed of virtual machine instructions at runtime, the method comprising:
receiving a first virtual machine instruction;
...
generating, at runtime, a new virtual machine instruction that represents or references one or more native instructions that can be executed instead of said first virtual machine instruction; and
executing said new virtual machine instruction instead of said first virtual machine instruction.
8. In a computer system, a method for increasing the execution speed of virtual machine instructions, the method comprising:
inputting virtual machine instructions for a function;
compiling a portion of the function into at least one native machine instruction so that the function includes both virtual and native machine instruction;
representing said at least one native machine instruction with a new virtual machine instruction that is executed after the compiling of the fuction.
It goes on to detail the claims, but altogether this describes the standard way of making a JIT-compiling bytecode VM: replacing bytecode with native code prefixed by a single "native JMP to following" bytecode pseudo-op. Other claims also add the ability to store the original bytecode else
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And that is where software patents fail. "Hey, I have an idea, but someone else had a remotely similar idea that I don't really know anything about, but I came up with this concept and wrote my code without pulling it from anywhere else, but somehow that's illegal."
All patents work like that, not just software patents. That's one of their crucial differences from copyright - the work does not have to be derived to infringe on a patent.
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And Go is successful?
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This isn't about the language at all, this is strictly about VM at this point.
And my understanding is that, if Oracle's patents are valid, it is very hard to create a high-performance VM without trodding on them - one patent in particular [google.com] is pretty much a patent for JIT-compiling bytecode.
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And it's terribly slow by comparison to the other options. Even according to their own research [computing.co.uk].
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Re:Language (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, brainfuck is much faster [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck] and it's not bloated with the useless stuff (objects, classes, letters, digits).
Dude, seriously? Are you kidding? Brainfuck is horribly, incredibly bloated. For a real language without all the ridiculous bloat of Brainfuck, there's only one reasonable choice [dur.ac.uk]
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I'd mod you up if I had points, was thinking the same thing.
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I'm not sure Go fits the bill...
Apparently it's more high level than C , but lower level than Java.
Sure, iPhone apps do ok with ObjC, I'm thinking Go has the same level of abstraction
Of course, the main Google mistake was using Java (not to be a Java hater here, but I think that the whole model around Java, as opposed as, for example, running mainly native code, or something else, came as a detriment).
Even with JNI, the main problem is all apps depend on JVM/Dalvik.
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Really? Where are non-ARM android phones? (Score:2)
The practical reality is that Android phones are ARM, in part because Google has promoted using the native development kit for games... Android doesn't really need the cross-platform aspect of Java.
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Android doesn't just run on phones. Not all other devices use ARM based processors.
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x86 is an officially supported Android platform since recently (they've added NDK support for that, so you can put x86-compatible NDK apps into the Market, for example).
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No you don't. You just need to resort to compiling the executable once for each of the supported processor architectures then sticking them all in a folder with ".app" at the end of its name, hiding its real implementation specifics from the user.
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Of course, the main Google mistake was using Java (not to be a Java hater here, but I think that the whole model around Java, as opposed as, for example, running mainly native code, or something else, came as a detriment).
Even with JNI, the main problem is all apps depend on JVM/Dalvik.
I think the main reason why they used Java is because it let them piggyback on the existing Java infrastructure - not just the compilers, but, much more importantly, the very powerful IDEs like Eclipse and NetBeans. Also, given how many Java programmers were out there already, they immediately had a wide audience for whom barrier to entry was very low (esp. compared to Apple's Obj-C/Cocoa combo).
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I think the main reason why they used Java is because it let them piggyback on the existing Java infrastructure - not just the compilers, but, much more importantly, the very powerful IDEs like Eclipse and NetBeans.
I totally agree, it was a huge win to be able to fold things like simulators into Eclipse and give people an instant modern IDE for Android development from the outset.
I think it was a smart choice, even with the issue they have now.
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It's not rocket science to write an Eclipse plugin that supports a non-Java language. There are plugins for C/C++, PHP etc.
What they really wanted to piggyback on was the multitude of Java developers, as you also noted.
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It's not rocket science to write an Eclipse plugin that supports a non-Java language. There are plugins for C/C++, PHP etc.
It's only not "rocket science" if you don't compare the features of those plugins. I'm not aware of any other language plugins that comes even close to the refactoring capabilities provided by Eclipse Java support, for example.
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That's because those kinds of refactorings are either impossible due to the language (PHP) or extremely hard to the point of being impossible (C, C++).
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C is actually quite easy to refactor; C++ is a bitch (but possible; VS has 100% faithful code completion for it already - accounting for macros, templates etc - refactoring is the obvious next step).
Even so, while you're generally right in that refactor tools need an easy-to-work AST, and Java supplies it - it's much easier for Google to reuse that, then to reimplement the entire set of available refactorings (some of which can still be pretty advanced) for whatever new language they might devise. I'm not s
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It just so happens at the moment that Java is the development language of choice and most of the layout APIs are tailored to that environment. Despite some cruft Java is an excellent langu
Sun (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sun (Score:4, Interesting)
They just reduced the cost of a settlement. A permanent injunction is still pretty bad. If they though there was a threat or wanted to pay that much, they could have just taken sun offer at the time for a 100mil.
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Given the effort Google have gone to to hire across an awful lot of Sun's staff since the transition, it does seem very strange they didn't just buy them in the first place, getting the staff, patents, and getting rid of the need to try to create a split between Dalvik and Java. I guess they just balked at buying the hardware side, but as I understood it they could have resold that part to HP fairly easily.
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And THAT is the answer to the question "why did Google not buy Sun". It is cheaper to just some nickels and dimes now. And I guess they didn't need Solaris.
Not quite. The reason Google didn't buy Sun is that there's nothing of value for them that they would have gained other than Java. That's a lot of money to spend on just a small subset of Sun's value.
The rest of Sun in no way promotes any of Google's revenue streams.
Good lord. (Score:2)
I'd just like to be the first to say, "fuck Oracle".
I hope those bastards fade into irrelevance. I mean, what haven't they done to piss everyone off recently?
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Interesting point. One could say that Google is doing Oracle a favor by using Java in the platform. I can't think of ANY software on my PCs that are written in Java but my Android device is chock-full of it.
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I use 2 major Java apps. The first is Minecraft, aka "game that became insanely popular for a few months but has kinda faded away now". The second is GanntProject, a free and open-source project-management tool.
Other than those two, the only Java apps I have are the ones I wrote for a college class, which I haven't touched since I took said class.
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About 50% of the applications I use at work are java based. So MMMV (My Mileage May Vary).
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Re:Good lord. (Score:5, Funny)
I'd just like to be the first to say, "fuck Oracle".
I'm sorry to inform you but you are too late [lmgtfy.com].
Like an election, doesn't matter who wins (Score:2)
All parties are recognizing software patents...
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Software patents do exist, so not recognizing them would be a sign of insanity. And unless they are unconstitutional, it's not the court's job to decide whether they should exist.
Re:Like an election, doesn't matter who wins (Score:4, Informative)
In the case of patents, actually, most of the US statutory principles behind patentability have their roots in judicial decisions stretching back almost 200 years in some cases, all of which stem from the Constitutional provision empowering Congress "To promote the Progress of... useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to... Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective... Discoveries."
Subsequent to various court decisions, Congress chose to codify most of those decisions in particular ways to further define certain requirements. There are a few cases where court decisions were countermanded by Congressional action, such as 35 USC 112, sixth paragraph, and the bit in 35 USC 103(a) about "patentability shall not be negatived...," but for the most part, when it comes to patentability, Congress has just gone along with what the courts have said.
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The UK has a common law system too, but when parliament passes an act (and that German woman with the gold hat signs it) then it becomes law.
But, but, but ... (Score:2)
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If Google is found guilty of patent infringement, doesn't that also make everyone who sells or uses Android-based phones also guilty?
Er, I'm not 100% positive, but I am fairly certain that's not how it works. When a product is supplied to you, you are generally indemnified against all legal issues stemming purely from the provider. It's like how you're not charged with crimes if it turns out your car's engine exploded due to a manufacturing error, rather than you just didn't maintain it for the past five years. Generally, the worst that can happen is you're deprived of the right to use that product, but even that's pretty rare, and usual
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Doesn't matter if you use an Android based phone or if you're guilty of patent violation - damages will be minimal. No possibility of 100 million damages against an individual, more like $1 as there are over 100 million devices.
Can you really imagine Oracle suing someone for $1? Or even $3 for triple damages from willful infringement?
And if they do sue you, then they can't sue the manufacturer because they're attempting to get compensation twice for the same event (or at least I believe that's the case).
Pat
Kill All Software Patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Who loses when all of these patents are enforced. (We, the public, do - Big Time!)
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Does Android compete with Apple. (No, if you want an iPhone you're not going to buy an Android phone and vice versa.)
Too much of a stretch, isn't it? Of course one brand of phones competes with the other.
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[1] Did anybody other than Google put in the effort to create Android [2] and deserve the rewards for doing so?
[1] By definition, yes. Someone spent time and effort creating an idea, a technique, a widget, whatever. If they hadn't, there would have been nothing to patent. That idea/technique/widget was then used by Google who could build Android faster, cheaper, easier, more useful, because they didn't have to both identify the problem and then think of a solution to it themselves. So, yes, someone other than Google put in [some of] the effort to create [some of what became] Android.
Actually, massive numbers of peop
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You sure that it is impossible that no one else around the time would have or did come up with the same ideas? JIT systems are definitely not a new idea. They have been used in games for a very long time. Look at Infocom and SCUMM (Lucas Arts) games. They used basically JIT. I know that when I was in college back in the 1980's in class we talked several times about JIT and how they would work and how it could be done. The problem back then was getting it adopted not the technical issues. No two computer mak
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[1] By definition, yes. Someone spent time and effort creating an idea, a technique, a widget, whatever. If they hadn't, there would have been nothing to patent. That idea/technique/widget was then used by Google who could build Android faster, cheaper, easier, more useful, because they didn't have to both identify the problem and then think of a solution to it themselves. So, yes, someone other than Google put in [some of] the effort to create [some of what became] Android.
Sorry but that's really not the case. You're making an assumption that just isn't true when it comes to software development - people never reuse idea/techniques/widgets from patents because there aren't any idea/techniques/widgets in patents, only claims.
Patenting idea/technique/widget X does not mean you've helped anyone. I have my name on several patents myself and have waded through many other patents (software and hardware), what you actually have are a series of claims and that's what you infringe - t
Re:Kill All Software Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Does Android compete with Oracle? (No, Oracle doesn't market phones or tablets and never will.)
Oracle licenses Java ME to phone manufacturers and Android is destroying that revenue. Though in a good sense, because Java ME should be killed off.
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Does Android compete with Apple. (No, if you want an iPhone you're not going to buy an Android phone and vice versa.)
Whoa. That is an amazingly narrow definition of "compete". So, if Android doesn't compete with Apple's iOS, could you give an example of what Android does compete with?
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Does Android compete with Oracle? (No, Oracle doesn't market phones or tablets and never will.)
Oracle markets Java ME, which must be licensed by phone manufacturers, for money.
Does Android compete with Microsoft. (Not really.)
Microsoft makes Windows Phone 7. It also has a couple of different flavors of Windows designed for embedded systems, and I see an awful lot of device manufacturers considering Android for those these days (the Barnes & Noble Nook line, for example).
Does Android compete with Apple. (No, if you want an iPhone you're not going to buy an Android phone and vice versa.)
Buh? You might as well ask "does Ford compete with Chevy" and conclude that it does not, because once you own a Chevy you're not likely to buy a Ford and vice versa. Competition
Google is not the good guy here (Score:2)
You seem to be confused this is not a case of software patents (at least not primarily, like apple-htc for example). I mean google did not use "the principles behind java". It did not use a new version of the language, it does not use different opcodes, it does not ... Google uses Java, verbatim, Google uses the binary format of java, verbatim (yes they package it *slightly* differently), Google uses the sun jvm (a secondary derivative, but that, too, is illegal), ... You use the very same development tools
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Er?
Dalvik bytecodes are not sun bytecodes - they don't work, at all. And I suspect you're misunderstanding what verbatim means - because it certainly doesn't mean 'slightly different'.
Dalvik was written anew, not developed from a sun JVM. Although how clean-room this is as it was written is to be decided in the courts - and last I'd heard Oracle's contention that this was copied has been mostly shot down, hence the patent claims being the most talked about currently.
"Java is not public domain, and anything
Never mind software patents (Score:2)
Kill all patents.
But understand that this will not happen, because patents depend on government, government is the issuer of patents, governments wants monopolies, thus government wants patents. Government wants to have franchises, monopolies, it hates competition and it destroys it everywhere it sees it, and government likes to control things, to be involved into everything in the economy, where it clearly does not belong at all.
So that's why patents will not be killed, though all patents need to be killed
This cannot be good for Java... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, is Oracle making any money off Java? Far as I know they're not making a cent from it. All versions of java are open to use.
If they get a few billion (which they had hoped for) from Google it'll really pay its rent. That said, I do see Oracle killing off this language due to being bad money hungry people indeed, and I hope someone will fork it because , well, it was a clever idea.
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You do realize most of the products Oracle sells rely on Java, right? That's the entire reason they didn't want it going to IBM.
Oracle didn't block the sale to IBM. Sun's talks with IBM broke down, IBM walked away from the table, and Oracle swooped in.
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No, Sun made upwards of $100 million per year licensing Java to the mobile phone industry.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20013549-264.html [cnet.com]
Java was free on the desktop, but not on mobile.
Since Android was going to to be a unifying OS for all manufacturers, dropping J2ME, $100 million is an eminently reasonable figure for licensing Java to Google.
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I doubt it could be forked. That's what Google tried to do and some parts of the implementation are patented. Microsoft forked with C# but had to get some kind of Sun approval after the fact.
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You can't use J2SE on mobile devices (I'm pretty sure Google would have wanted to use J2SE) due to Field of Use restrictions and J2ME wasn't any good, so no choice if you wanted to use Java. Sun wouldn't open the Field of Use restrictions at all - possibly because they were making money from it but I don't know.
As far as I know Sun said it had to be J2ME on Android which wouldn't have worked, J2ME is incredibly restricted and frankly almost sufficiently different from J2SE to be a different language.
Sun cou
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Yep. They're cashing in their board position for some cash now.
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What? Where did that leap in logic come from? Sun had specific terms around using Java in embedded applications. It appears Google realized that, but perhaps felt by using Dalvik rather than a Sun JRE, they would be avoiding that.
Most mainstream Java programming, involves server-side applications. The outcome of this trial should have no bearing whatsoever on those mainstream uses of Java. At all.
If Java's mainstream appeal will be diminished by anything, it's the rise of alternatives (e.g., ruby, python, c
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I don't see why would that be the case. You don't get sued by using Java that comes from Sun/Oracle, or a certified compatible implementation, which is what the vast majority of people are doing. Especially in areas where Java is dominant or at least popular today - big enterprise apps and web apps - this lawsuit has no relevance at all.
Sure, for the use of Java in a mobile device, you'd have to pay (though that only applies to device manufacturer, not e.g. app developers). I don't know how much Oracle asks
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>I am inclined to think that if Oracle wins this, then there are going to be a lot of other places that are going to end being afraid of utilizing Java in the future
And which ones would those be? Mobile and embedded apps? The licensing scheme for Java was always that the desktop is free, embedded/mobile is not.
What that means is your average 2-man programming shop can come up with nifty Java CRUD apps for free. Your average multinational corp that wants to produce 100,000 phones has to pay a fee.
Read the
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This trial doesn't matter either way, as it's going to be appealed by whomever loses. This judge is giving both sides ample ammunition for appeal. Frankly, this trial is a total waste of time, money, and effort. The appeals court is going to grant the loser a new trial, anyway.
Some of the decisions this judge made are just jaw-droppingly bad.
Just Use Mono (Score:2, Funny)
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I'll bite. Everyone just use Qt. Free, portable, open source. With QML, no C++ is needed.
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With QML, no C++ is needed.
QML is a markup language, embedding a subset of JavaScript for things like data bindings. My impression was that it doesn't give you access to all features of Qt - e.g. if you need to write your own custom control, or even for a lot of model code (DB access etc).
License JME (Score:2)
Re:Under attack from all sides. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who the heck then will invest for capital intensive research like medicine and semi-conductor fab tech?
Perhaps you're looking at it backwards. With patents out of the picture, there will be a need to do things much, much cheaper and innovation will drive towards increasing efficiency rather than how to protect your monopoly. I love it when the drug argument is used regarding patents. I just answer sarcastically: yeah, because acetyl salicylic acid (more commonly known as Aspirin) which has been out of patent since forever is a real money-loser. You will never find generic/store brand painkillers containing this product. Here ends the sarcasm. Pharmacy companies complain about all the billions it takes to make a new drug and fail to mention that drugs still sell long after the patents expire. It's not like Lipitor has been pulled from the shelves (patent just expired recently). Yeah there's competition - so what? For every Coke there's a Pepsi, for every McDonalds there's a Burger King. Suck it up and earn your money like everyone else.
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They can keep secret how it's done, but determining the chemical formula of a new drug is trivial.
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Yes - after the development costs have been recouped. And given that anyone can now make it, the margins will be less.
If anyone could copy it right from the start, you wouldn't get the chance to recoup those costs, because you'd never have the high initial margin.
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Re:Under attack from all sides. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Drugs and other medical research should not be performed by commercial entities in any case, there is far too much conflict of interest... For instance, it's far more profitable to keep someone sick and taking drugs than it is to cure them, so the research will be directed at temporarily alleviating symptoms rather than curing the underlying problem.
Medical research should be carried out by charities, governments and other groups who's goal is improving people's health, not making a profit.
When it comes to
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The universities, where most of the research comes from today. 99% of R&D budgets are pure D, research just doesn't happen in the private sector anymore.
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Pharmecutical companies spend more than twice as much on advertising as they do on research. And much of their research is on updating drugs about to move out of patent protection to get them another 20 year monopoly. And even then their total annual research is less than 30 billion. We'd get more bang for our buck by removing their patents and spending 30 billion on grants for targetted medicines. Then maybe we'd get cures for real diseases, and not another 13 erection pills and non-existant diseases l
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Additionally, t
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The universities, where most of the research comes from today. 99% of R&D budgets are pure D, research just doesn't happen in the private sector anymore.
Intel drops $4 billion a year on their research group. Microsoft drops $10 billion a year. A lot of that money goes for pure research that ends up not commercialized, and a lot of it is directed to universities to work hand-in-hand with the companies. Private funding of grants for university research is huge - it's the dominant share of university research funds. Companies may not do as much direct research as they did, but they still fund the majority of it - they just fund it through the use of unive
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Ah but here lies the difference between patents and copyright.
To use a car analogy (since they're pretty popular around here) - if I patent a car, I am locking down all ideas which are similar to it. So even if you get a person in the jungle whose never seen a car in his life, and he thinks up "Hey ... car", and designs one from scratch - it'll still be bad since he is 'copying' the idea. Clean room or not clean room.
Now copyright on the other hand, yes. If you do the same idea in a different manner, that's
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They did a clean room implementation of Java that worked exactly the same way.
No, that's not quite right. Dalvik is a new virtual machine which, as I understand it, loads and executes bytecode in a way that's more efficient on low-power devices with limited resources. You start with a Java program, which you compile using the Oracle Java compiler. You then run it through an extra step that transforms the stock Java bytecode into Dalvik bytecode. Dalvik will not run regular Java code until you do this last part.
That said, it doesn't really matter. Dalvik could be a virtual machine tha
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Giving up on the US market just over not being able to use Java is unlikely and stupid. They will just find another dev language probably either extending Go or create a C++ framework. Assuming damages cover the already distributed androids they are fine to use java but for new version devs must rewrite their apps.
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Giving up on the US market just over not being able to use Java is unlikely and stupid.
Unlikely, yes. Stupid? Probably not... The US market has around 180 million cell phone users. China alone is around 800 million (China Mobile boasts 600 million subscribers alone). Add in SE Asia and India and we're talking close to 2 BILLION potential Android customers.
In the big scheme of things, the US market for cell phones is interesting, and it's great for early adopters, but as a monster source of long-term revenue the US really isn't where it's at. Witness Nokia's lack of presence in the US
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Unless they can control the internet advertising there is no benefit to selling phones with android. I would think that every US android user is worth many times more in ad revenue and search data (i don’t think that google is likely to be kept as default search engine by the majority) than someone in china.
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Just don't pick Britain or Germany, where software patents appear to be legal...
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>Java is a great technology, but Sun was unable to build a viable business around it, and Oracle acquired Sun largely for litigation potential.
Well, it was getting $100 million per year for mobile Java, which also subsidized desktop and server Java development.
Until Google came around and had all the mobile manufacturers transition to Android, and didn't pay Sun a cent.
That's what this trial is about.
From Andy Rubin [computerworld.com], father of Android:
Yah, nice quote (Score:2)
But you forget the power of fanboys. Just this case alone shows just how unsuitable Java was as a choice but you can't get a fanboy to admit such things. A high level exec can't be a fanboy? Oh but they can. And it explains so many boneheaded decisions. Just using the word suck in any official communication shows enough.
Exactly who thought it was smart to base an OS that you give away for free on software that needed a license fee? Java always had the license hovering over it but some at Google are amazing