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For a start, there was no wholesale copying | 458 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Really, ya'll gotta get over your butthurt about the jury's decision
Authored by: tknarr on Monday, September 24 2012 @ 02:54 PM EDT

You'll notice, though, that unlike in this case that juror didn't go on to say that they ignored the judge's instructions because they didn't want limits on openness. There's a major difference between having an opinion vs. ruling contrary to the law because of your opinion.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

For a start, there was no wholesale copying
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2012 @ 03:22 PM EDT
And after that, your post goes so far off in the weeds, it's not even funny.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

#2 - Google & Acer/Aliyun
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2012 @ 03:36 PM EDT
If you still think Google was in the wrong over Acer/Aliyun, you really need to
read these - Acer would have gotten into serious copyright violation trouble if
it had gone ahead with Aliyun:

http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/15/aliyun-app-store-confirmed-to-be-distrib
uting-pirated-android-apps-many-from-another-pirate-site/

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/technology/google-alibaba-acer-android-aliyun-ch
ina-292615.html

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Really, ya'll gotta get over your butthurt about the jury's decision
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2012 @ 04:08 PM EDT
I admire your sense of fairness at taking on the job of Devils Advocate, so I award you two out of ten for that alone. But I'm subtracting 9 marks though for you your lack of a constructing a convincing augment. That leaves you with...

Oh, I think I'm repeating myself - must be the radishes.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Florian? Is that you? n/t
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2012 @ 04:39 PM EDT
n/t

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Really, ya'll gotta get over your butthurt about the jury's decision
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2012 @ 05:23 PM EDT
That's the difference between "open source" and "free"
software. "Open source" means if you get your grubby hands on the
source, you can do whatever you want with it. "Free" means that, in
addition, anyone who gives you binary has to give you source also.

For both Java and Android, there are restrictions are on whether you can use the
TRADEMARK. These have nothing to do with whether the SOURCE is open, shut, free,
or non-free.

Android isn't "Free" Software. It's "Open Source". Someday
"Android", like "Unix", may refer to several competing
implementations: but right now "Android" just means "the source
you get from Google." And that source is "open".

Java isn't software at all. It's a language. Implementations of Java may be
free, open, or neither. The Sun/Oracle implementation is partly free, partly
non-open.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Really, ya'll gotta get over your butthurt about the Oracle vs Google jury's decision
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2012 @ 05:40 PM EDT
"Limits on openness" is a reporters summation of a jurors
summation of the attitude of the tech savy jurors. All put
into a tweet which has severe limts on the number of
characters used. I take it mean that the tech savy jurors
were disinclined to accept that there were any limits on
what use of Java specifications could be made outside of
actual use of the tradmark. Something experts testified that
Sun mot only indicated publicly but intended.

This compared to Hogan who pushed a theory, "if runs on a
different processor it is not prior art", something which he
has freely admitted he told other jurors, and of all the
jurors making statements, that they looked to him for
guidance on patent validity issues.

As for the wholesale copying of nine lines of code, even the
judge who said it happened said it was not a significant
amount.

So next time I suggest that you read something other then
tweets, and oh yeah get over your butthurt about the Oracle
vs Google verdict.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Oh dear
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2012 @ 06:19 PM EDT
Has a devotee been stirred up?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Actually, you're the one who is butthurt
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 24 2012 @ 07:02 PM EDT
We're just discussing various aspects of this case, what apparently went legally
wrong and what Samsung is doing about it.

You, on the other hand, seem to be very, very "butthurt" about a
completely different case. Why don't you go to that discussion and provide
information about what Apple is legally doing about this butthurt of yours.

Oh, what's that? There is no legal basis of your butthurt? Well, that's why
you are whining on this thread, isn't it?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

A reasoned reply
Authored by: JonCB on Tuesday, September 25 2012 @ 05:21 AM EDT

On the assumption that you're not just a troll (just because you have strange ideas) i'm going try to answer your points.

On the surface, you perhaps have an argument here. I certainly wasn't motivated to look deeper because the verdict in Oracle-V-Google(hereafter OvG) WAS satisfying. Having said that I only had motivation to look deeper in Apple-V-Samsung(AvS) because PJ (who has at least some knowledge of the legal system remember) smelt a rat. So lets dig beneath the surface together and see what we can see.

If i read your points right, you're arguing that the parallel "bad calls" from OvG are :-

  • "more tech savvy jurors were less likely to go for limits on openness. Ie they were pro google". This shouldn't have been a factor in their decision.
  • Remember, this jury was told to assume APIs were copyrightable and "was split 9-3 for google on copyright fair use"[3]! Wholesale copying is fair use?!
  • Not to mention the fact that they thought the line-for- line duplication of rangeCheck was not copying, which even the Judge had to overturn.(subsequently corrected to the 9 test files)

So to take these deeper and in order.

On the subject of "Tech Savvy Jurors" I spoke on in one of my earlier comments. In the link you provided, that gave more detail about the actual comment, the full quote was "Thompson did suggest there was a general sense among some jurors that Oracle's intellectual property claims might not be in the public's best interest." Looking at the Jury Instructions in OvG (#26 for those playing at home), A fundamental aim of "Fair Use" is to allow the use of "any copyrighted work in a reasonable way ... if it would advance the public interest". So that says to me(and i feel that many who would qualify for "tech savvy" would see it the same way) that there are two questions, "Was the copying reasonable?" and "Would allowing the copying advance the public interest?", where answering no on either would invalidate fair use (bearing in mind that the burden to prove that is on the defense). We know that the defense raised the argument that copying the SSO of a dynamically generated library of documentation that is built from comments on code that MUST take the form it does is definately within the public interest and blocking it is not. This means that debating whether Oracle's intellectual property claims with respect to the SSO was in the public interest is very much on topic and to the letter and spirit of the instructions.

On your second point, I think you're assuming things about Google's argument that is building a strawman in your head. Google's legal argument is perhaps best summarised as "the API could not possibly have been any different therefore following legal precedent is is, by definition, fair use". When we say "wholesale copying" yu get this image of all these pages of code that are identical, when everyone agreed that a) the code was different and b) (iirc) the text of the comments was similar only in so far as it was describing the same things. As such what was "up for grabs" in terms of "wholesale copying" was merely the signature lines i.e. "what's the name of the method, what are its inputs and what are its outputs". This will generally equate to less than 10% of any worthwhile file (gut feel, i haven't checked this. Assumes 1 line for signature compared to 2 lines for method brackets, 3 lines for method comment(both of which are pretty much minimum given Sun's code formatting standards and on average 4 lines + of code)). Having said that, wholesale copying doesn't come into the argument at all. The question is (as above) is it reasonable and in the public interest for Google to copy the SSO of a standardised library and that is not as rediculous as you make it out to be.

Finally on your third point... This is probably your strongest point (mostly because it was in the end backed up by the Judge). Google's argument, that the Jury obviously agreed with, is that the "work as a whole" MUST be the entirety of Java (that is what they registered after all) and that 9 files that have little to no value that were placed in the system by a third party who was specifically told not to do so, and they removed the files as soon as it was pointed out, is (in my opinion) the very definition of a trifle, and the law does not concern itself with trifles. The nature of Judge Alsup's judgement was that the law suggests that the "work as a whole" should instead be the file which was copied in its entirety. Note however that this DOES NOT appear in the jury instructions, instead the instructions always talk about "work as a whole" without further definition (at least as far as i could find). Thus the jury were within their rights to give credence to Google's argument but if they had've been informed that the work should be considered the file that would have been problematic

Compare the answers to these three points to the accusations levelled at Foreman Hogan's jury in AvS.

  • They were told to read the jury instructions carefully. They admitted they gave them little to no attention ("they just bogged them down" i believe was the quote)
  • They were told that their own experience is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is the evidence given at trial and their jury instructions. They admitted to folowing Hogan's "experience with patents"
  • They were told that the only valid theories of recompense are "lost profits" and "reasonable royalty". They said they wanted to "send a message" with a punitive award

These are clear violations of what they were asked to do. Not kinda-if-you-look-at-them-right violations but direct contradictions of their instructions... which they might have known if they had read them. Like they were asked to.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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