LARRY ELLISON

The long-running dispute between Oracle and Google over whether Java application programming interfaces (APIs) used within Android were protected by copyright has taken another strange turn, with the Justice Dept urging the Supreme Court not to hear Google’s appeal.

The legal battle is over whether small sections of code originally written by Oracle’s predecessor, Sun Microsystems, can be used under the ‘fair use’ exemption to copyright laws. Google argues that it used only small code snippits, did so mostly for consistency and offered to pay royalties; Oracle argues that the code is its intellectual property, and the royalties offered were too low … 
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Earlier this month, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison claimed that Google and its CEO Larry Page were “absolutely evil” and used Oracle’s “stuff” through its use of Java in Android. Oracle originally sued Google for the supposed stolen code, but Oracle lost the $6 billion legal battle. After Ellison’s latest comments, however, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has finally decided to respond to the claims.

In response to claims that Google “took [Oracle’s] stuff,” Schmidt proclaimed those as “simply untrue” and that the U.S. District Court agrees with him.

We typically try to avoid getting dragged into public battles with other companies. But I’ve gotten a lot of questions about Larry Ellison’s claims that Google “took [Oracle’s] stuff”.  It’s simply untrue — and that’s not just my opinion, but the judgment of a U.S. District Court.

Schmidt went on to give the backstory of the lawsuit, saying that “you cannot copyright an idea, like a method of operation” and the ruling in the Google vs Oracle battle “protects a principle vital to innovation.”
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Photo: dailymail.co.uk

Larry Ellison is apparently still smarting from the court battle he lost back in May of last year when he accused Google of copyright infringement over its use of Java in Android, lost and ended up paying Google’s $4M court costs.

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Oracle bought Java from Sun Microsystems, and claimed ownership of some of the code used by Google. Google argued that the small amount of replicated code was ‘fair use’ and that the rest of it was coded from scratch simply using similar approaches to Java. Oracle lost.

In an interview with CBS’s Charlie Rose, transcribed in Business Insider, Ellison accuses Page of violating Google’s company slogan, Don’t be evil. Transcript below the fold … 
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