decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Then Oracle doesn't have a leg to stand on. | 104 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Then Oracle doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 01:42 PM EDT
I wish it were that simple, however Google chose to implement a small set of the
Java language in order to make it easy to be able to write programs in Java and
enable them to run on an Android device.

So they have an implementation of some Java Language constructs in their virtual
machine, which have a same/similar Structure, Selection and Organisation of
those in the J2SE It is alleged that Google copied that SSO, either directly, or
by reading it from the API Specification. (this is referred to as the 37 APIs)

Specifically, for example, if you look at the java.nio package in J2SE you will
find that it has the same Classes/Interfaces and such as the java.nio package on
Android and that the Items contained there ($TypedBuffer classes) have the same
Methods and Fields. Note, it is not the code, the VM, or even the names
themselves, just the SSO, or the 'grouping' of the names,

Similarly if you refer to to the Android developer reference material at
developer.android.com you will find those constructs are fully documented, and
if you're skimming through, it could be argued that it looks like Oracles Java
API Specification. (the API Specification, or English Language descriptions aka.
a book)

In addition to those two, which as far as I can tell are the big ticket items,
there are 9 lines of directly copied code, used multiple times, a few lines of
comments, and another 8 files. Google have admitted they copied these and assert
that they have removed them from Android.

So Oracle has a leg, definitely, the question really is whether or not Oracle
can convince the Jury/Judge that the docs were copied, and/or there is something
special about how Sun/Oracle choose to 'compile' its "not a compilation of
facts" aka the 37 APIs, and if they did, they've been damaged to to the
tune of beeeeeeeeellions.


Important notes: Please read these before hitting the reply button

This post just to be clear that Oracle and Google are in this court for a
reason and that there is something to be cleared up.

I assert nothing with the regard to the validity of those claims (at least in
this post)

I do not wish to encourage another round of, what about the GPL, it's free, you
can't copyright a language, but an API is just <pick any one of a thousand
analogies or come up with another thousand> .

I have also tried to reflect what we 'know' and at this time it is only Oracle
that have had a chance to put their case forward, and the above is an attempt to
precis those assertion.

We have not yet heard from Google on their defences and it is entirely possible
that aside from the admitted infringing, Oracle are in fact just waving around a
massive foot gun and are indeed about to blow their leg of.

Thankyou for reading.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )