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Google pushes to drop damages phase of Java infringement trial | 225 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections here
Authored by: feldegast on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 10:39 AM EDT
So they can be fixed

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

News picks
Authored by: feldegast on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 10:40 AM EDT
Please make links clickable

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Tweets from the courtroom
Authored by: feldegast on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 10:43 AM EDT
Main feed
https://twitter.com/#!/Feldegast

Raw tweet feed
https://twitter. com/#!/Feldegast/oracal-vs-google- trial

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off topic
Authored by: feldegast on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 10:44 AM EDT
Please make links clickable

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Comes transcribing
Authored by: feldegast on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 10:45 AM EDT
Thank you for your support

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Presumption of innocence/Reasonable doubt
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 10:50 AM EDT
Shouldn't the jury, if they can't understand the claims, be
forced to rule non-infringement due to presumption of
innocence? (That is, if they can't understand the wording of
the patent, then there clearly exists a reasonable doubt as
to whether infringement occurred - confusion should favor
the defendant)

Seems like a case where you need to have technical experts
in the jury... who even then only have a chance of
understanding the legalese descriptions of computer code
comprising the claims. Of course, then you hit a brick wall
with technical experts and the part where they get software
being mathematics.

I am forced to conclude that it should be impossible to
prevail on software patent cases, because the patents are
written incomprehensibly to non-experts, barely
comprehensible at all to experts, and experts are liable to
be stricken from the jury for having strong opinions as to
the patentability of software.

Also, I reiterate my point that a patent that can't be
easily understood by experts has clearly failed the
requirement to disclose the invention and is thus invalid
anyways.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The importance of SSO in Oracles own words...
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 10:55 AM EDT


"All programs, however, need not have packages, which are merely convenient
ways to organize the classes."

So their own package heiriarchy is superfluous convenience rather than decades
of creativity?


just askin'

[ Reply to This | # ]

Connection with reality
Authored by: PolR on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 11:19 AM EDT
On the other hand, the instructions to the jury, while clear, do not anticipate the difficulty this jury (or any jury in a patent infringement case, for that matter) will have in determining whether every requirement of a claim has been satisfied by the allegedly infringing product or process. These "requirements" (or claim elements) are highly technical and will often turn on a subtle distinction in a definition of a term within a claim or description of the components of the allegedly infringing product. That is why any patent infringement trial is a roll of the dice for both parties.
So not only we have to deal with case law about software patents which are not connected with reality, but also the rules of procedures ensure that factual determinations will only have a loose connection with reality?

Can anyone explain how this help promote innovation?

[ Reply to This | # ]

The Supremes are going to be very angry
Authored by: Ian Al on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 11:45 AM EDT
As the Supremes said in Bilski,
The application in Diehr claimed a previously unknown method for “molding raw, uncured synthetic rubber into cured precision products,” using a mathematical formula to complete some of its several steps by way of a computer.

Diehr explained that while an abstract idea, law of nature, or mathematical formula could not be patented, “an application of a law of nature or mathematical formula to a known structure or process may well be deserving of patent protection.”

Diehr emphasized the need to consider the invention as a whole, rather than “dissect[ing] the claims into old and new elements and then … ignor[ing] the presence of the old elements in the analysis.”

Finally, the Court concluded that because the claim was not “an attempt to patent a mathematical formula, but rather [was] an industrial process for the molding of rubber products, ” it fell within §101’s patentable subject matter.
Any activity on Google's part that are abstract ideas which are not “an application of a law of nature or mathematical formula to a known structure or process", cannot, by definition, infringe on a valid patent.

The corollory of the 'invention as a whole' opinion is that infringement only occurs when all the process steps are employed and not just the old elements that, as with the claims asserted from the two patents, pre-existed them by decades. The asserted claims against Google are for old elements in the process which pre-date the patents by decades.

The USPTO only allows one invention per patent. A failure to assert all the claims that represent the innovation in the single invention leaves the high probability that the innovation represented by the invention as a whole is not infringed. That does not mean every claim has to be asserted, of course. It may be that the same innovation is represented by multiple sets of claims. It is merely required that the asserted set must encompass the invention, as a whole.

Please note that the above arguments are not about proving the two patents invalid. The patents being valid or invalid are irrelevant to Google. Google do not infringe on a valid patented invention as a whole because the only allegedly infringed claims are for pre-existing and old elements.

Also, they cannot infringe on either patent because what they do is the application of abstract ideas, a law of nature or mathematical formula to something which is not 'a known structure or process.' Whether, or not, either patent is actually the application of an abstract idea, law of nature or a mathematical formula applied to something which is a known structure or process is irrelevant to Google.

There is also the issue of significant post-process activity. In Bilski, the Supremes said,
As the Court later explained, Flook stands for the proposition that the prohibition against patenting abstract ideas “cannot be circumvented by attempting to limit the use of the formula to a particular technological environment” or adding “insignificant postsolution activity.”
Nothing of what Google do or incite has any post-process activity. Certainly, everything that Google do that might be related to the valid patents stops in the middle of the program compilation stage. It is all abstract ideas and concepts that never leave the Android development computer.

As the Supremes said at the end of Bilski,
The Court, therefore, need not define further what constitutes a patentable “process,” beyond pointing to the definition of that term provided in §100(b) and looking to the guideposts in Benson, Flook and Diehr.
Of course, they are not the experts in copyright and patent law.

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Wong and Poore
Authored by: 351-4V on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 12:16 PM EDT
Sorry, I must have missed it. What is it that Wong and Poore will testify to
actually? That they worked with Android and saw no infringement?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle's motion regarding Hinkmond Wong and Noal Poore
Authored by: Gringo_ on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 12:46 PM EDT

So Oracle thinks Hinkmond is the wong man to testify about Android knowledge for Google, and would exclude poore Noel as well. But Oracle introduced these witnesses, and the jury is entitled to learn the details their prior involvement with Android.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Jury instructions and verdict form don't jive.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 12:52 PM EDT
In the instructions to the jury, on the question of indirect infringement, the
judge says that the jury should decide if mobile device manufacturers, mobile
service providers, developers, and end-users of Android have directly infringed
any of the asserted claims, and then if the answer to any of those is yes, to
decide if Google has indirectly infringed by inducing those others to directly
infringe or by somehow contributing to the direct infringement.

But the jury form itself says to only answer the questions on indirect
infringement as to those claims that they answered "Yes" to in
questions 1 and 2, but questions 1 and 2 are asking if Google directly
infringed, not if the mobile device manufacturers, mobile service providers,
developers, and end-users of Android have directly infringed.

I don't understand. This seems to be a serious mistake.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Google pushes to drop damages phase of Java infringement trial
Authored by: SilverWave on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 02:58 PM EDT
Google pushes to drop damages phase of Java infringement trial

---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions

[ Reply to This | # ]

4 1/4M USD thats the Most Damages will be.
Authored by: SilverWave on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 03:01 PM EDT
Quote:Van Nest stated that all three experts expected to appear in the trial
have estimated the potential damages associated with the '520 patent at under
$100,000, with infringement of the claims in the '104 patent possibly resulting
in damages of up of $4 million.

---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions

[ Reply to This | # ]

Are there Amici in this case?
Authored by: steveire on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 03:29 PM EDT
I was wondering if there were amicus briefs in this case. It seems like Oracle
is aiming for the kind of result that would call for some.

Are the Amici waiting for the appeal before filing briefs?

[ Reply to This | # ]

creation of new accounts has been temporarily disabled
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 06:09 PM EDT
I registered a few years ago, but couldn't find my password, so I thought I'd
reregister. Will registrations be enabled again after this trial?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Patent '520 is standard refactoring optimization, totally normal practice
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 06:14 PM EDT
Patent '520 "discloses" what software engineers do on a regular basis whenever they optimize their code to consolidate work in a single place instead of repeating actions unnecessarily all over the place.

It's part of refactoring computations from inner loops to outer ones, and it's part of increasing code locality to improve cache utilization by reducing page faults.

This has been normal practice ever since the first paper on optimization was published and since the first compiler course was given, and it was undoubtedly in use long before that. I'm referring to many decades ago.

The fact that this particular optimization is performed at startup time is quite immaterial, because such refactoring is generic. If X is a mechanism used as standard practice, I fail to see how "X during initialization" suddenly becomes novel enough for patent protection.

This patent looks ludicrous to me. It can only look novel to someone unskilled in the discipline.

[ Reply to This | # ]

surprising correction from Oracle
Authored by: xtifr on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 06:31 PM EDT

One thing I was surprised--and pleased--to see in Oracle's proposed changes was the replacement of:

...each statement being a single command executed by the Java interpreter.
with:
...each statement being a single directive to take some action.
Confusion between Java-the-language and Java-the-platform seems to be entirely in Oracle's interest, but here they have deliberately suggested a rephrasing to avoid that confusion!

When spotted that, I thought that I must have been reading Google's proposed changes, and was shocked to realize it was from Oracle. I can only assume that this change was included by MoFo over the protests of BSF. :)

---
Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for it makes them soggy and hard to light.

[ Reply to This | # ]

'520 patent. WTH?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 08:47 PM EDT
Err, has anyone actually noticed that the '520 patent is
simply meant to solve the problem of static array
initialistation requiring lots of "a[b] = c" statements.

A problem that the Java compiler/bytecode wouldn't have if
it wasn't so brain-dead. Most C compilers do their static
initialisation at compile time and then just blat the data
from the source area to the destination area, although even
_that_ may not be required if the source and destination are
the same area.

Most engineers, when faced with this problem, would go the C
way because of its elegance in removing the problem at its
source. Only an idiot would create a process to fix the
problem after it had occurred.

And only the king of idiots would think this was somehow
useful enough to warrant a patent. I was always under the
impression that patents were meant to advance the state of
the art, not work around problems that can be fixed with a
far better solution :-)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle v. Google - Day 13 Filings
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 11 2012 @ 01:29 AM EDT
Intermediate form code and intermediate form object code: Both “intermediate form code” and “intermediate form object code” mean “executable code that is generated by compiling source code and is independent of any computer instruction set.”
This is a weird definition. Yes, it's code, but no it's not really executable. I mean, it even says that the code is independent of any computer instruction set. "Executable" means you can run the code. Hard to do that when there are no computers capable of following those instructions.

Hopefully it doesn't matter for anything, but that's not really correct to call it executable. It never gets run. It goes through further processing before being turned into executable code.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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