Oracle Sues Google For Android’s “Copyright Infringement”
So...Google’s being sued again. Turns out hardware/software corporation Oracle is putting forth a copyright infringement claim. The target? Google’s Android OS.
According to Oracle, Android basically ripped off the Java programming language, which was acquired by the company in 2009 through the purchase of Sun Microsystems(a transaction that ran at about $7.4 billion, more money than most of us will ever see in a lifetime). According to a filing released Friday, the damages from this infringement are somewhere in the several billion dollar range . They claim to have a “wealth of concrete evidence” regarding both the infringement and the amount of damage it’s supposedly caused to the company. Man, lately it seems like lawsuits are being tossed left and right in the tech industry. It’s starting to get a touch ridiculous; truth be told.
On June 6, a letter from Google attorneys to U.S. District Judge William Alsup stated that, according to Oracle’s damage expert, Google owes oracle somewhere between $1.4 and $6.1 billion dollars in damages if they’re found liable. Understandably, Google’s not too pleased about this estimate, labeling it “a breathtaking figure that is out of proportion to any meaningful measure of the intellectual property at issue…even the lower end of the range is over ten times the amount that Sun Microsystems Inc. made each year for the entirety of its Java licensing program and twenty times what Sun made for Java-based mobile licensing.” In another statement, Google claimed that “Oracle’s ‘methodology’ for calculating damages is based on fundamental legal errors and improperly inflates their estimates” I’m inclined to agree with them. While I’m not saying that Oracle doesn’t have a case- I’d have to see the evidence to decide that- this whole thing just stinks of a cash grab. Given that the higher end of the range is just under one billion less than what Oracle paid for Sun Microsystems…well, you see where I’m going with this, right?
Image via Engadget
Exactly what does Oracle believe Android stole from them? “The infringed elements…include Java method and class names, definitions, organization, and parameters, the structure, organization and content of Java class libraries, and the content and organization of Java’s documentation…In at least several instances, Android computer program code also was directly copied from copyrighted Oracle America code.” The original complaint was filed way back in August 2010, with few details about what Oracle believed was stolen from it. An amended complaint was filed in October with specific examples of infringed code.
I wonder how much Google’s paying their lawyers to deal with headaches like this?
(Via Fierce Mobile Content)
