Boom: Jury Says No Patent Infringement By Google In Oracle Case
from the there-goes-that-one dept
Remember back when Oracle was claiming that Google owed it billions of dollars for infringing on Oracle patents and copyrights? Yeah. Forget that. The jury just said that there's no patent infringement at all and the judge has dismissed the jury. All that's left in this phase of the case is for the judge to make a determination over the copyright issue -- and if he decides APIs cannot be covered by copyright, Oracle will have a complete and total loss. Of course, Oracle will almost certainly appeal, but this case has turned into something of a complete disaster for the company.Groklaw has the details with "no" answers across the board:
Clerk:Question 1: has Oracle proved by preponderance of evidence that Google infringed?
Claim 11: not proven
27: no
29: no
39: no
40: no
41: noQuestion 2: not proven
1: no
20: noQuestion 3: no answer, no response, not applicable.
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*is?
Google outfringing again
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Fixed. Thanks.
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Lawyer Fail.
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API copyright, yes?
And Europe answered the question, with a "no, they're not".
If the US decides this the other way... am I the only person predicting a mass exodus of cloud/SaaS providers from the US to Europe? Hey, this might just be the thing to jump-start the European economy!
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Re: API copyright, yes?
So-called "freedom" in the US and its sniveling weak-kneed sycophant amero-wannabe countries (such as Canada, Australia, Great Britain, India) is being destroyed by corporo-fascism anyway.
I predict a mass exodus regardless of the outcome of this case.
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Re: API copyright, yes?
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Re: API copyright, yes?
And they sure do not seem to be a friend to any Company who wants to innovate.The Patent System is a joke.All of us know that one for a fact.They do nothing to stop the assault of Patent Troll after Patent Troll.And they were willing to sell out Tech & The People with their SOPA/PIPAS Krap.I have really gotten to hate this Government so much and millions also do with me so I am not just some lone cookoo.I wish I did not feel this way as I love my Country but the Government certainly needs a real wake up call so yes.................move the new Tech to Nations who want them and will not do to them what is done to them here and if Europe is the answer then let em go there and start their new life.And if Europe is not maybe another Nation would love to see them there.
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We need to seriously re-examine Patents and Copyright, because, clearly, they are not working as intended.
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But they are working exactly as intended by current four* branches of government.
* be sure to count lobbyists as a branch of government
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Bonus
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Re: Bonus
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Re: Bonus
/at $73 million in salary per year, he can afford a new body.
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/unnecessary sarc
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/unnecessary sarc
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New Doogle
http://t.co/LR7Xio1r
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Don't mind me...
Of course, in some ways the copyright issue is bigger, y/n? Not that I'm going to let that curtail my plushie flailings. Wheeee!
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Fortunately it didn't....
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Re-Examination and the Long-Established Limits of Copyright.
As for the copyrights, for more than a hundred years, people have been trying, under various pretexts, to turn copyrights into super-patents, with longer duration, wider range of allowable subject matter, lack of examination requirements, etc. For more than a hundred years, the courts have been shooting these people down. Early cases tended to involve copyrighted books disclosing systems of book-keeping or accounting. Even if the trial judge was somehow induced to rule that API's were copyright-able, the Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court would correct the situation. The courts' consistent view is that if you want that kind of broad protection, you have to get a patent. The Copyright Office is simply not equipped to consider prior art or immediate obviousness, and doesn't even claim to be. The copyright claim was a desperation measure on Oracle's part.
David Boies is the kind of lawyer you hire if you are sitting on Death Row, and you have the money to pay for him. He is highly inventive, but in the end, he seems to lose all his cases, because "you can't make bricks without straw."
Mike Masnick has repeatedly emphasized the importance of execution, as distinct from invention. In a certain sense, prior art is a special case of this. There are incredibly vast piles of prior art, which went unused, for anything up to five hundred years, for want of execution, because they were trying to solve the wrong problem. Prior Art always surfaces, and given the standards of KSR vs. Teleflex, it can be linked together to form a defense against nearly any patent.
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Dear Larry:
-- sent from my Android phone
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Article seems to ignore the "9 lines" and the test files
1) Is the SSO of an API copyrightable? The judge will rule on this, and damages (if any) will likely depend on it.
2) Google did have "9 lines of code" -- which includes white space -- in one file, and a handful of test files, which might lead to (very modest) damages for copyright infringement. The jury said, "yes, they infringed", but deadlocked on whether it was Fair Use. Google accordingly moved for mistrial on that phase.
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