Boom: Jury Says No Patent Infringement By Google In Oracle Case

from the there-goes-that-one dept

Wed, May 23rd 2012 11:08am — Mike Masnick

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: no
Question 2: not proven
1: no
20: no
Question 3: no answer, no response, not applicable.

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Filed Under: android, api, java
Companies: google, oracle

29 Comments

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Ima Fish (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 11:13am

Wow. F'n wow.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2012 @ 11:13am

"All that's left in this phase of the case [if] for the judge to make a determination over the copyright issue"

*is?

Google outfringing again
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2012 @ 11:13am

I smell dead dinosaurs again.
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Baldaur Regis (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 11:15am

Lawyer Fail.
Oracle should have picked East Texas for the venue.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 11:17am

Re:
*is?

Fixed. Thanks.
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Doug D (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 11:23am

API copyright, yes?
All that's left is to decide the issue of whether APIs are subject to copyright, and if so, what the damages based on just that would be, 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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Jorge Whorwelle, 23 May 2012 @ 11:33am

Re: API copyright, yes?
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?

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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Mr. Oizo, 23 May 2012 @ 11:39am

Re: API copyright, yes?
yeah, after American Banks ruined the economic ecosystem.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2012 @ 11:40am

This is incredibly retarded. Everyone could see that Oracle had no case from miles away. All this spectacle did was waste everybody's time and money.

We need to seriously re-examine Patents and Copyright, because, clearly, they are not working as intended.
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Jeremy Lyman (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 11:42am

Bonus
Also, a random Android user gets to strike Ellison roughly with the back of his hand. What? That's how court works, right?
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2012 @ 11:48am

Re: Bonus
Only if I get to pick where to strike him. Surgery may be involved.
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MrWilson, 23 May 2012 @ 11:53am

Insert obvious troll FUD comment here including terms like "Big Search" and implying that Google has gotten away with "theft."
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Ruud (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 12:08pm

Re:
Patent and copyright reform? Think of those poor lawyers losing their jobs.
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Baldaur Regis (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 12:24pm

Re:
I miss boB, too.
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DannyB (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 12:26pm

Re:
Patent and Copyright may not be working the way they were originally intended.

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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Glen, 23 May 2012 @ 1:03pm

Someone blame Google! QUICK!!!!
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Jeremy, 23 May 2012 @ 1:36pm

Re: Bonus
I hope by random you mean one who spends time at muscle beach; and by back of the hand you mean closed fist.

/at $73 million in salary per year, he can afford a new body.
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The eejit (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 1:37pm

Re: Re: Bonus
Well, it depends on when they patent "Punch somebody in the junk through your smartphone."
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gorehound (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 2:16pm

Re: API copyright, yes?
Sounds great to me and I am a born and bred American at that.just that our Government does not Represent its People at all but they do Represent their own wallet, their own power, and their own Party.
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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TaCktiX (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 2:24pm

Re:
Stupid Google bringing up legitimate arguments about copyright and patent over-reach. It's all because they support the pirates, the counterfeiters, the terrorists, and every other ne'er-do-well on the planet. That and they had to have paid off the jury and the judge. Obviously the corruption is so deep that everyone here is brainwashed.

/unnecessary sarc
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TaCktiX (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 2:24pm

Re:
Stupid Google bringing up legitimate arguments about copyright and patent over-reach. It's all because they support the pirates, the counterfeiters, the terrorists, and every other ne'er-do-well on the planet. That and they had to have paid off the jury and the judge. Obviously the corruption is so deep that everyone here is brainwashed.

/unnecessary sarc
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Krish (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 2:25pm

New Doogle
I think this captures my feelings accurately:

http://t.co/LR7Xio1r
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2012 @ 3:54pm

Don't mind me...
...I'm just going to run around like a muppet with my hands flailing in the air for a little while.

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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Mega1987 (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 6:13pm

If that case got did not got the "no infringement" result, the computer science/information technologies thesis are dead from the beginning...

Fortunately it didn't....
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Andrew D. Todd, 23 May 2012 @ 6:55pm

Re-Examination and the Long-Established Limits of Copyright.
The main point is that about ninety-percent of Oracle's patent claims were overturned in Re-Examination. It would have been more if the patents had been re-examined in the light of Mayo vs. Prometheus. The moral is that anyone likely to be targeted by a patent troll should start filing Requests for Re-Examination against every patent they can think of. A patent troll should be afraid to attempt to blackmail you about a software patent, for fear that, even though you are in the software business, you might start in on their pharmaceutical patents.

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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Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 23 May 2012 @ 9:09pm

Dear Larry:
My condolences.

-- sent from my Android phone
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Anonymous Monkey (profile), 23 May 2012 @ 11:46pm

Re: Re:
seen bob just a little bit ago here!
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bill, 24 May 2012 @ 6:08pm

Nothing was wrong untill the baks got INVOLVED!!!!i!i!i!I!i!i
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richard, 26 May 2012 @ 11:52am

Article seems to ignore the "9 lines" and the test files
The copyright question boiled down to _2_ things:
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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