In 2019, Google asked the Supreme Court to review Oracle’s long-running lawsuit over whether Android’s usage of Java was fair use. The Supreme Court this morning sided with Google and overturned Oracle’s win following a lower court ruling three years ago.
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In 2010, Oracle sued Google over alleged Java infringement during the development of Android. Appeal courts have repeatedly overturned lower court decisions that sided with Google. This legal case is now going to the Supreme Court in what could be a landmark decision.
Oracle won an appeal last March in the long-running legal trial with Google. It followed a jury in 2016 ruling that Android’s use of Java was fair use. Today, Google filed a petition with the Supreme Court to review the case and overturn the appeal.
Australia’s ACCC is using information from Oracle to investigate Google and Android’s potential privacy issues and excess mobile data usage.
Back in 2016, it seemed that the long-running Oracle vs. Google trial over the use of Java in Android was coming to a close. Google won a resounding victory with jurors ruling that the Android usage was fair use. Unsurprisingly, Oracle appealed and today won that decision, with wide-ranging applications for the tech industry.
After closing arguments wrapped up in the Google vs. Oracle case on Monday, the jury has come to a decision over the use of Java code in Android. Announced moments ago, the jury sided unanimously in Google’s favor.
Earlier this evening, the Oracle vs. Google lawsuit revealed Android’s revenues and profits for the first time. The same case has now revealed that Google paid Apple $1 billion in 2014 as part of its ongoing deal to be the main search provider—as in the one that resides in the search bar by default—on iOS devices.
Legal cases always make for a good source of information. In the early days of Android, lawsuits revealed the inner workings between Google and its OEM partners. The latest court hearing in the five-year legal saga between Oracle and Google revealed how much money Android generates.
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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Google is still battling Oracle over code used in the search giant’s Android operating system.The Mountain View-based software company recently petitioned the US Supreme Court, arguing that the high court needs to protect innovation. Google is trying to overturn an appeals court ruling that Oracle has the right to copyright portions of the Java code found in Android.
A seemingly drastic turn of events in the appeals court has reversed the ruling on some elements of the Google-Oracle trial.
The ruling enables Oracle to claim copyright ownership over some parts of Java. The crux of the trial was whether API names and constructs could be owned. The initial decision said that it couldn’t, giving Google a landslide victory. However, the appeal court papers now say the exact opposite:
For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organiza- tion of the 37 Java API packages are entitled to copyright protection. Because there is an insufficient record as to the relevant fair use factors, we remand for further proceedings on Google’s fair use defense.
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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Disclosure: I was in the pay of Google throughout the Oracle litigation.But <sob> I couldn’t say anything.
— Tim Bray (@timbray) August 7, 2012
A judge ruled today that Google and Oracle must disclose any payments made to Internet authors, journalists, or bloggers for published commentary related to the Google vs. Oracle lawsuit involving Android software.
The trial is just now ending, but Judge William Alsup issued a court order (PDF) today that calls for both companies to divulge which Internet-based journalists were compensated. The judge is apparently concerned that evidence in the case includes analysis from influenced bloggers.
FOSS Patents‘ Florian Mueller revealed in April that Oracle and Microsoft pay for posts on his blog, where he regularly discusses the Google vs. Oracle case.
The full court order is below:
A jury decided this last month that Google did not infringe upon Oracle’s patents, but it has recently come to light that Oracle must pay Google’s steep legal fees accrued during the trial.
Oracle, a database software giant based in Redwood City, Calif., sued Google in August 2010, while alleging the Android operating system violated a number of patents and copyrights within Java, which Oracle acquired through Sun Microsystems. Android currently powers more than 150 million mobile devices. Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., adamantly denied Oracle’s contention, and claimed the Android team was unaware of Sun’s patents before the suit.
Google spokesperson Jim Prosser told Business Insider that Oracle did not succeed in landing a $6 billion settlement from Google, but it did win the responsibility of paying Google’s $300,000 in legal expenses.
Texas-based shell company Lodsys has often been accused of being a patent troll for its various attempts to take legal action against app developers and companies that it claims uses its technologies. Most notably, the company last year attempted to get iOS and Android developers to pay royalties over in-app purchasing before Apple’s legal team eventually intervened on behalf of developers. Now, after recent threats from Lodsys to Oracle customers such as Walgreens over a web-chat technology, Oracle is suing Lodsys in an attempt to invalidate its patents. GigaOM reported:
Oracle has decided to weigh in because Lodsys “has repeatedly threatened numerous Oracle customers” such as Walgreens over the use of a web-chat feature Lodsys claims to own. Oracle is asking the court to declare that the four patents Lodsys is using to bully its customers are not new inventions. The patents, including US Patent 5,999,908 (“customer based design module”), came to prominence last year when Lodsys used them to sue Best Buy, Adidas and others.
[tweet https://twitter.com/timbray/status/205359972647829504]
A jury decided this morning that Google did not infringe upon Oracle’s patents.
The verdict came unanimously as jurors in the Google vs. Oracle trial found six claims in U.S. Patent RE38,104, including two claims in U.S. Patent number 6,061,520, did not infringe.
“Today’s jury verdict that Android does not infringe Oracle’s patents was a victory not just for Google but the entire Android ecosystem,” announced Google in a public statement, according to CNET.
Oh, and here is Oracle’s public statement on the decision: “Oracle presented overwhelming evidence at trial that Google knew it would fragment and damage Java. We plan to continue to defend and uphold Java’s core write once run anywhere principle and ensure it is protected for the nine million Java developers and the community that depend on Java compatibility.”
There is a lot of interesting news coming out of the Google v. Oracle Java trial today. Yesterday, former CEO Eric Schmidt gave his testimony to the court, and today Andy Rubin took the stand where he revealed a slide deck with Google’s ambitions to sell 10 million Android tablets during 2011 and other pieces of information related to Android revenue.
On-hand reports from The Verge point us to a few of the more intriguing statements made by Rubin and others today:
Google Phone:
The image above is of the “original Google phone” concept presented to carriers almost two years before Google finally launched the first Android handset, the T-Mobile G1. The images of the device came up in the trial due to references to Java in the designs. A year later, in May 2007, almost a year after iPhone, Google was still designing Android with a physical keyboard in mind—as noted in Android specification documents during the trial.
Android Revenue:
First, we get a close look at Android revenue numbers for the first time. The numbers come from a quarterly report given by Rubin and others in 2010 that show the company expected revenue from Android to reach $278.1 million during the year.
The forecast was based on increasing the roughly 20 million Android phones in the market at the time to 40 million by the end of the year. Google was also expecting to pull in $158.9 million in Android ad revenue and just $3.8 million from its 30 percent cut of app sales. According to the report, Google forecasted bringing in $840.2 million from Android ads and $35.9m from app sales in 2012.
Subsidized unlimited data plans:
Another interesting document that emerged from the trial shows Google suggested to T-Mobile in 2006 that it would give up its finder’s fee commission for new customers in order to provide Android phones with $10 monthly unlimited data plans. Of course, that plan was never carried out, and the original Android T-Mobile G1 launched with the conventional $25+ plans.
The ongoing Oracle v. Google trial is churning up some doozies regarding the history of Android, and this latest one is almost unbelievable: Google projected to sell roughly 10 million Android tablets a year for 2011 and 2012 while seizing a third of the marketshare.
A presentation by former Android Inc. CEO Andy Rubin in July 2010, exhibited during the trial, revealed those hefty figures. Obviously, Google’s view was a little optimistic, especially because the search engine also expected Android tablets to reap $110 million in search revenue for 2011 and $220 million for 2012.
The company’s ballpark figures derived from a then-current Morgan Stanley estimate that placed the tablet market around 46 million units for 2012. Needless to say, Google missed its target. Rubin admitted last February that only 12 million Android tablets sold in the previous two years. Apple, on the other hand, has a stronghold on the market with over 67 million iPads sold, of which 11.8 million moved in Q2 2012 alone.
Today’s two-year-old slide deck is significant, because it unearthed the first-ever Android revenue numbers, as well as early user-interface designs for Android 3.0 Honeycomb.
The gallery of slides is below.
Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt took the stand at 9 a.m. PST this morning to give his direct testimony during the Oracle v. Google trial, and while the questioning hulked along, the executive’s answers glimmered with cynicism.
Oracle’s counsel immediately showcased a plethora of documents from 2005 and 2006 that seemingly depicted the Internet giant as having prior knowledge about needing Sun software licensing agreements to apply Java in the Android mobile operating system, but the Executive Chairman denied the exhibited emails and presentations and remained steadfast to his defense that he was unaware Google even needed permission to employ the open-source software.
Oracle, a database software giant based in Redwood City, Calif., sued Google in August 2010, and alleged the Android operating system violated a number of patents and copyrights within Java, which Oracle acquired through Sun Microsystems. Android currently runs on more than 150 million mobile devices. Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., denies the contention.
In today’s court appearance, Oracle is essentially alleging that Schmidt and Google had clear knowledge that they did not have explicit rights to use Java in Android. Meanwhile, many Google officials, including Schmidt, profess otherwise.
[Schmidt’s testimony lasted until 12 p.m. PST—see below for details.]
So, everyone is aware that Java platform maker Oracle is amid a courtroom grapple with Google over whether Java patents were infringed in the search engine’s mobile operating system Android, but not everyone is clued in to the defendant’s intriguing side of the story.
According to Google’s money slides (via ZDNet), the heart of Google’s defense is summarized in three clear-cut points: Java code was free and openly available to the public; Google did not violate any patents or copyrights when developing Android; and, Oracle is disgruntled due to its and Sun’s failed attempts to market a Java-based platform for smartphones.
Google gave a testimony to Congress last year claiming it earned two-thirds of its mobile revenue from iOS devices, but now it seems as though the company’s estimate might have been low.
Google made less than $550 million in revenues for Android between 2008 and 2011, while making four times as much revenue during the same period with Apple products that employ Google services like Search and Maps.
According to The Guardian, the settlement offer provided yesterday by Google to Oracle depicted Android’s revenue streams. Settlement discussions ordered by Judge William Alsup were derailed when Oracle rejected Google’s low offer to pay royalties on Android if alleged patent infringements deem true in court.
Reuters reported yesterday that the settlement stems from a 2010 lawsuit where Oracle claimed its Java-related patents were infringed by Android. Oracle acquired the intellectual property in question when it purchased Sun Microsystems in 2010.
Stemming from a lawsuit in 2010 where Oracle claimed Google was infringing on its Java-related patents with Android, a court document today reveals Oracle rejected Google’s offer to pay a percentage of Android revenue if the alleged patent infringement is proven in court. Reuters reported:
Google proposed to pay Oracle a percentage of Android revenue if Oracle could prove patent infringement of the mobile operating technology at an upcoming trial, but Oracle rebuffed the offer as too low, according to a court filing late on Tuesday.
As for Google’s offer, Reuters said the company would give approximately $2.8 million in damages to cover 2011, and a future 0.5-percent royalty of Android revenue for one patent that will expire in December. A second patent included in the case would provide Oracle with an additional 0.015-percent until it expires in April 2018. According to the court document, Oracle is holding out for a possible injunction:
Software maker Oracle estimated that each day’s worth of Android activations makes Google approximately $10 million in annual revenue while also strengthening its Google+ service, German patent blogger Florian Mueller wrote on his FOSS Patents blog today. Oracle made this claim at a German court in regards to its patent infringement claims against the search giant:
While this case awaits trial, more than 700,000 Android-based devices are activated every day, all fundamentally built around the copyrighted Java APIs and the enhanced performance enabled by Oracle’s patents. Each day’s worth of activations likely generates approximately $10 million in annual mobile advertising revenue for Google.
Oracle did not explain its math, however, leading Mueller to suspect that the figure is based “on the assumption of annual advertising revenues of $14 per Android user.” Interestingly, Oracle wrote in court documents “Analysts have predicted that the number of new Android devices will reach 2.5 million per day within twelve months.” However, it is not just about mobile advertising, the success of Android is benefiting Google’s other properties, namely its Google+ social network…
