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Google Responds to Oracle Patent Infringement Claims

phandroid

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Apr 12, 2008
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Google isn’t pleased with the latest suit filed against them and their open source Android OS. Oracle is claiming that seven of their patents are infringed upon in Android and its accompanying Dalvik virtual machine. The suit has dollar signs written all over, as Oracle recently acquired Sun Microsystems with intentions to reap the benefits [...]

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Because they are nothing but patent trolls using the antiquated patent system as a weapon and means to make money from people doing real work. That's how.

Bwahahahah! Oracle a patent troll? BS of the highest order.

You've no idea how the world works. Oracle is Sun and they OWN Java. It is their property. They did the work.

It is GOOD to increase profitability not evil.
 
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Bwahahahah! Oracle a patent troll? BS of the highest order.

You've no idea how the world works. Oracle is Sun and they OWN Java. It is their property. They did the work.

It is GOOD to increase profitability not evil.

Wait what? Oracle BOUGHT Sun, they didn't create shit. They BOUGHT it so they can sue everyone who uses it. Get your facts straight.

Noob.
 
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Wait what? Oracle BOUGHT Sun, they didn't create shit. They BOUGHT it so they can sue everyone who uses it. Get your facts straight.

Noob.

I have my facts straight. They had a pooling of assets. This means that the exact same entity that created Java still owns Java. That entity is just now a part of a greater entity. Would you argue that Sun's intellectual property ceases to exist just because Oracle buys Sun? If so you'd be wrong.

Also, corps exist for the shareholders not the employees. I get so sick of people that miss this very important fact.

And please don't now start assuming that I am in favor of mistreating
employees. You will be wrong when you start down that path.
 
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I have my facts straight. They had a pooling of assets. This means that the exact same entity that created Java still owns Java. That entity is just now a part of a greater entity. Would you argue that Sun's intellectual property ceases to exist just because Oracle buys Sun? If so you'd be wrong.

Also, corps exist for the shareholders not the employees. I get so sick of people that miss this very important fact.

And please don't now start assuming that I am in favor of mistreating
employees. You will be wrong when you start down that path.

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Seriously? You do you really believe that?

IP laws/patents are such a joke anyways. The flawed system needs to be fixed.

All IP patents do is stifle innovation/invention. Which is the opposite of it's intended purpose when it was put into place. Now companies use it to have virtual monopolies. Give me a break.
 
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I have my facts straight. They had a pooling of assets. This means that the exact same entity that created Java still owns Java. That entity is just now a part of a greater entity. Would you argue that Sun's intellectual property ceases to exist just because Oracle buys Sun? If so you'd be wrong.

Also, corps exist for the shareholders not the employees. I get so sick of people that miss this very important fact.

And please don't now start assuming that I am in favor of mistreating
employees. You will be wrong when you start down that path.

Actually you don't have your facts straight...
Oracle Buys Sun
Redwood Shores, CA - April 20, 2009
Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt. “We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle’s earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,” said Oracle President Safra Catz.
Direct From Oracles Site
You must work for Oracle... or you're a fanboy :eek:
 
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Wow. Another subscriber to the "greed is good" mantra.

I find his statement funny since it won't increase their profits. Sure Oracle owns Java (which Sun open sourced and is STILL open source which almost obliterates Oracle's case from the jump) but they don't own Spring, Tomcat, Jetty, Eclipse, Apache Commons, MyFaces, PrimeFaces, OpenFaces, IceFaces, Guice, Wicket, Struts, Tapestry, Vaadin, Hibernate, Groovy, Grails, Scala, Clojure and on and on.... These are open source projects that make Java what it is. Java without them is just a language and a run time. If you develop with Java you'd find that you will get almost absolutely nowhere without using at least one of these projects especially once you leave desktop development. Some of these projects are backed by corporations that make continue them. Some are basically volunteer based and these guys don't have to keep these projects up at all. They can easily switch their work to another platform. And with them would go the developers that rely on these projects to get work done. And these projects are used by many major shops....they aren't just hobby projects.

Oracle made a serious miscalculation here and everywhere I got on the internet thats Java related I see people already looking for the alternative platform to rally around. I'd like to see Oracle attempt to support all of these projects themselves.
 
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I have my facts straight. They had a pooling of assets. This means that the exact same entity that created Java still owns Java. That entity is just now a part of a greater entity. Would you argue that Sun's intellectual property ceases to exist just because Oracle buys Sun? If so you'd be wrong.

Also, corps exist for the shareholders not the employees. I get so sick of people that miss this very important fact.

And please don't now start assuming that I am in favor of mistreating
employees. You will be wrong when you start down that path.

Sun was extraordinarily lax in defending their copyrights. This is a complete shift in ideology.

Former employees of Sun have also made it known that Oracle's focus during the purchase negotiations was whether or not they had a case for suing Google.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-...Android-Part-of-AntiOpen-Source-Drive-269739/
 
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Sounds like we have a bunch of slackers 'round here. Least wise we don't have many herein that create intellectual property.

I bet you guys share MP3 files as well?

Are you the same group that copies software CD's?

And to the poster above RE: patents, it does exactly the opposite of what you think. Patents give you a MONOPOLY and it does so to by giving an incentive to people who take risk inventing new things. And that MONOPOLY is an asset which is what Oracle OWNS.
 
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Sounds like we have a bunch of slackers 'round here. Least wise we don't have many herein that create intellectual property.

I bet you guys share MP3 files as well?

Are you the same group that copies software CD's?

And to the poster above RE: patents, it does exactly the opposite of what you think. Patents give you a MONOPOLY and it does so to by giving an incentive to people who take risk inventing new things. And that MONOPOLY is an asset which is what Oracle OWNS.

Lol seriously dude?

1.) Archiving a software cd is perfectly legal.

2.) Sharing mp3s doesn't hurt the artists like the RIAA wants you to believe. That is 100% fact. Google it.

The patent system was designed to help create innovation. In return for the patent, the methods/knowledge of what the patent cover has to be shared so others can reproduce it later on down the road. The lobbists of large corporations basically bribed congress to break the once functional patent system

Todays patent system as we know it is a complete farce. It is nowhere near its original intentions, and granting a virtual monoply for 10 20 even 30 years is simply obscene. Its so distorted some 3rd world countries are better off then we are, regarding this subject.

Not to mention as someone mention it was open sourced years ago. This is purely a money grab by oracle, and this case is shooting themselves in the foot. If. By some miracle they win, developers will simply drop java altogether.the syntax is so close to other runtimes it wouldn't take much to switch.

Are you the type that also says the us constitution are more really like general guidelines than rules? If so, id call that borderline treason(if you live stateside.
 
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IOWA...

Well,Sun is the steward of Java. As far back as 2007, Google pretty much gave Sun the middle finger; thinking they can lead the direction of Java. This dispute has been well documented. Sun wasn't the type to pursue litigation. Oracle, on the other hand, has every reason to do so as the new owner.

This was their "FU" middle finger salute response in 2007.

"Google and the other members of the Open Handset Alliance are working to help solve fragmentation and supporting the developer community by creating Android, a mobile platform that responds to the needs of the developers, has the backing of industry leaders, and will be available as open source under a nonrestrictive license," Google said in a statement.
Source:Sun's worried that Google Android could fracture Java | Underexposed - CNET News

This goes against their "Do no evil Mantra" They totally sidestepped the licensing of the JVM for handsets. Java is open source but not the JVM.

Here is another article from way as far back as 2007,
Dalvik - Google's tweaked, non-standard JVM for Android!!!! - O'Reilly ONJava Blog
Google’s Android software for Open Handset Alliance raises eyebrows of every Java developer because of its non-standards. Instead of supporting the Sun’s open source efforts on Java, Google went in a different direction and came up with its own JVM named Dalvik which executes Java programs on Android phones. It is neither Java SE, nor Java ME.
We have enough problems with Java mobile development already.
Not all phones support all the same Java standards, so there is no guarantee that the same software will run on multiple devices, as the “write once, run anywhere” Java tagline promises. Now Android is going to create more problems than solving. With this, programmers will have a new breed of Java to develop mobile applications, those cannot be ported to any device except Android powered phones. We already have enough versions(standards) of Java, why do we need another one?. I don’t think any Java developer is interested in developing the applications in non-standard version, unless you want to win the 10 million dollar prize? It sounds like Google is trying to bribe the Java developers to adopt this non-standard Java with 10 million dollar prize. Well, may be its another Google’s don’t be evil policy -:)

Pretty much, Google wanted to fracture Java and go about in their own direction.


Bottom and short line:

When Sun GPL Java, they only did it for the standard version. The mobile version requires every mobile device to be licensed w/ Java ME
Nokia paid, so did others. I remember Toshiba paying for Java ME license. Google didn't want to pay. They
wanted to use standard JVM. The problem is standard JVM doesn't allow any company to fork it (original Microsoft lawsuit).
Each JVM needs to pass a certain testing kit and behave like Sun's JVM.So instead of settling for the standard JVM, or license the ME, Google decided to create their own JVM. Only it is not a JVM, rather a superset of it.
Then when Android launch, remember that 10 million prize. Sure sounds like a bribe to me.


Again, going against the "Do no evil policy" If you care to google some of the Java Me mailing lists, the "bribe" mantra has been discussed many times but Java developers in 2007. I never saw that coming and now it sort of makes sense.

If you care to google and search. The discontent among many developers, Sun, and analysts go way as far back as 2007. So there is definitely a trail of discontent.

Again, this was talked about way back in 2007.
Google and Sun may butt heads over Android | ITworld
Instead of using the standards-based Java Micro Edition (JME) as an engine to run Java applications, Google wrote its own virtual machine for Android, calling it Dalvik. There are technical advantages and disadvantages to using Dalvik, developers say, but technology may not have been the driver for Google.

Google most likely built Dalvik as a way to get around licensing issues with Sun that would have come with using JME, said Stefano Mazzocchi, a developer and board member at Apache Labs.

Phone makers that incorporate JME into their phones must license the technology from Sun if they intend to make any modifications to it, Mazzocchi said. A phone maker could freely use JME under an open source license if it shares innovations to the software with the community, but most large handset makers are reluctant to do that, he said.

Rather than require phone makers to license JME as part of Android, Mazzocchi said, Google built its own virtual machine. Dalvik converts Java bytecodes into Dalvik bytecodes.

"So Google can say Dalvik is not a Java platform," said Hari Gottipatti, a mobile developer who also has been examining the issue.

Google declined to comment on Dalvik.

"I believe Sun didn't see this coming," Mazzocchi said. "I think this was a very smart and clever move."

Still, Google could run into trouble. If Google used any of Sun's intellectual property to build Dalvik, Sun could sue Google for patent infringement, Mazzocchi said. "I'd be very curious to see what Sun would do," he said. That's because Sun is a staunch advocate for open source, so it would hardly appease the open source community to sue Google over an open source software stack.

Here are some comments I made on another post....

Well, I read some more of this and this blog post from 2007, yes, 2007, explains why Oracle has a solid case:
Stefano’s Linotype Dalvik: how Google routed around Sun’s IP-based licensing restrictions on Java ME

Today Google released the Android code and I took a serious look at its internals… and found the solution for the licensing problem. It’s called Dalvik and it’s the new name of Sun’s worst nightmares.

Dalvik is a virtual machine, just like Java’s or .NET’s, but it’s Google’s own and they’re making it open source without having to ask permission to anyone (well, for now, in the future expect a shit-load of IP-related lawsuits on this, especially since Sun and Microsoft signed a cross-IP licensing agreement on exactly such virtual machines technologies years ago… but don’t forget IBM who has been writing emulation code for mainframes since the beginning of time).

But Android’s programs are written in Java, using Java-oriented IDEs (it also comes with an Eclipse plugin)… it just doesn’t compile the java code into java bytecode but (ops, Sun didn’t see this one coming) into Dalvik bytecode.

So, Android uses the syntax of the Java platform (the Java “language”, if you wish, which is enough to make java programmers feel at home and IDEs to support the editing smoothly) and the java SE class library but not the Java bytecode or the Java virtual machine to execute it on the phone (and, note, Android’s implementation of the Java SE class library is, indeed, Apache Harmony’s!)

The trick is that Google doesn’t claim that Android is a Java platform, although it can run some programs written with the Java language and against some derived version of the Java class library. Sun could prevent this if they had a patent on the standard class library, but they don’t and, even if they did, I strongly doubt it would be enforceable since Android doesn’t claim to be compatible (and in fact, could very well claim that their subset/superset is an innovation on the existing patent and challenge Sun’s position).


I also read this comment on another blog:
Apparently you still need to license mobile JVMs from Sun (and now Oracle) and what Google did was completely get around the licensing by claiming that they don't have a JVM, they have DALVIK VM, which isn't Java compatible, so it isn't really a Java platform.

In essence "Do no Evil" Google, tried to game their way around the license requirements. The fight has been going on behind the scene long before Oracle bought Sun. Now Oracle is suing with anything they can. to try to re-establish control over Java.


Have in mind, all these quotes are from 2007 and not some post-litigation August 2010 articles.
 
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mrsspeedmaster...

I don't have all the facts but just wanted to quote something that didn't make sense in your post...

mrsspeedmaster / itworld.com said:
Phone makers that incorporate JME into their phones must license the technology from Sun if they intend to make any modifications to it, Mazzocchi said. A phone maker could freely use JME under an open source license if it shares innovations to the software with the community, but most large handset makers are reluctant to do that, he said.

So as Dalvik is Open Source google is compiling by sharing the innovations with the community?
 
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mrsspeedmaster...

I don't have all the facts but just wanted to quote something that didn't make sense in your post...So as Dalvik is Open Source google is compiling by sharing the innovations with the community?

Dalvik is a substitute (round about) JVM. They are not contributing back to the JVM source repository. They're making it an independent project. That is the difference. They're forking it which goes against the original tenant of Java being written once, run anywhere. You can run a .dex file in a regular JVM and you can run class files in Android's Dalvik.
 
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Dalvik is a substitute (round about) JVM. They are not contributing back to the JVM source repository. They're making it an independent project. That is the difference. They're forking it which goes against the original tenant of Java being written once, run anywhere. You can run a .dex file in a regular JVM and you can run class files in Android's Dalvik.

But if the Dalvik engine is still Google's own project, Oracle still has no case. Period. Should windows go sue Wine and other emulators because it can read .exe's?

And that still doesn't help with that other issue of how messed up our patent system in in the first place.

And I'm sure if Oracle would let Google contribute back to the repository, they would.
 
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But if the Dalvik engine is still Google's own project, Oracle still has no case. Period.

That was the same reasoning behind Microsoft's Visual J++ and it costed them 920 million dollars.

Microsoft tried to fork Java for performance reasons on their platform. Same thing with Dalvik. Google does not want to use JVME and based Dalvik off JVMSE. They did this to avoid licensing.

Read this article: Oracle's Java lawsuit undermines its open source credibility

and

Ellison wrestles Google to strangle 'unofficial' Java ? The Register


They're using the Java programming language without respecting the tenants of Java. Need proof, go to the SDK website.

What is Android? | Android Developers

Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. The Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications on the Android platform using the Java programming language.
and
All applications are written using the Java programming language.
and

Android includes a set of core libraries that provides most of the functionality available in the core libraries of the Java programming language.

Every Android application runs in its own process, with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual machine. Dalvik has been written so that a device can run multiple VMs efficiently. The Dalvik VM executes files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format which is optimized for minimal memory footprint. The VM is register-based, and runs classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into the .dex format by the included "dx" tool.

Above quotes from GOOGLE no less.


You need to develop with Java language. Period. You are using Java technolog. They're bastardizing the language. They're forking it. Replacing core SE classes with their own.

As a company with a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, Oracle needs to vigorously defend its patents.


And I'm sure if Oracle would let Google contribute back to the repository, they would.

I posted an article from 2007 where Sun raised their concerns about Dalvik and Google pretty much gave them the middle finger and said, they're enhancing Java. Pretty much said, "we'll go in the direction we want.Take it or leave it"


This quote from the Register pretty much explains WHY oracle needs to do this:
The Java license is clear: even though Java is open source, Oracle grants a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license to use Java.

It seems that Oracle is arguing that Google's Android has violated its Java patents by running on a mobile device, where it's not allowed, instead of sticking to the desktop, where it's permitted.

Oracle needs everybody to stay their place, and can't afford to have different versions of Java running where they aren't allowed. To do so would allow two things: it would challenge the neat division of what versions of Java run where, and it would mean people could then begin disputing how much they pay Oracle in licensing fees.


Java's new owner is going after Google over licensing again, only this time for using the "wrong" Java on the "wrong" machines. It's a fight to assert Oracle's right to control Java that it paid $5.6bn for, and to stop others following Google in doing just whatever they damn well please
source:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/oracle_google_java_prosecution/page2.html
 
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That was the same reasoning behind Microsoft's Visual J++ and it costed them 920 million dollars.

Microsoft tried to fork Java for performance reasons on their platform. Same thing with Dalvik. Google does not want to use JVME and based Dalvik off JVMSE. They did this to avoid licensing.

Read this article: Oracle's Java lawsuit undermines its open source credibility

and

Ellison wrestles Google to strangle 'unofficial' Java ? The Register


They're using the Java programming language without respecting the tenants of Java. Need proof, go to the SDK website.

What is Android? | Android Developers


and

and



Above quotes from GOOGLE no less.


You need to develop with Java language. Period. You are using Java technolog. They're bastardizing the language. They're forking it. Replacing core SE classes with their own.

As a company with a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, Oracle needs to vigorously defend its patents.




I posted an article from 2007 where Sun raised their concerns about Dalvik and Google pretty much gave them the middle finger and said, they're enhancing Java. Pretty much said, "we'll go in the direction we want.Take it or leave it"

Oracle still doesn't have a case.

Seriously... Java was invented in 1994. Having a patent for 16+ Years still be valid is rather ridiculous.

Oh and the J++ thing, that was a trademark lawsuit. They were branding it as Java compatible when it really wasn't, so doesn't apply here.
 
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