Oracle has sued Google, claiming the popular Android operating system infringes Java patents, which Oracle acquired with Sun Microsystems this year.
“In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property,” said Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement.” Oracle is expected to ask for an injunction against future sales of Android phones, and is also making a copyright complaint, but there are few details yet. Google has so far declined to comment.
Android has also been gaining in popularity. In the US, Android is now outselling iPhone and Blackberry, making it the most popular smartphone operating system there. It came top in a poll of readers of eWEEK Europe UK, and sales in the UK have rocketed, growing 350 percent in the most recent quarter.
Android was created from the outset to be a free operating system, but Java’s creator, James Gosling predicted Google was heading for trouble over the way it implemented the ability to run Java apps.
Java was created by Gosling at Sun in 1995, to allow apps to run without recompilation on any platform that runs a Java virtual machine. Java became open source in 2007, but Sun retained the right to control and license its implementation of Java for mobile devices. Rather than licence Sun’s Java technology, Sun built its own Dalvik virtual machine which can translate and run Java code.
According to Mexican open source programmer Miguel de Icaza, who started both the Gnome and Mono projects, Oracle planned this lawsuit before it bought Oracle. Indeed Icaza says it was one of the assets which Sun executives pitched to potential buyers, and is part of the justification for the £5 billion Oracle paid for the company.
By picking the Gnu Public License (GPL) when it open sourced Java, Sun hoped to get revenue from licensing its technology, said Icaza in a blog post, but Google did not co-operate. Sun was doing poorly in the markets, so rather than sue Google themselves, Sun executives presented the potential lawsuit to prospective buyers.
“I am going to bet that the same careful planning that went into picking the GPL went into pitching the potential for lawsuits,” said de Icaza. “The world had already witnessed the awesome iPhone and the eyes were on Google to deliver a killer phone. Jonathan [Schwarz, Sun CEO] must have known this and he must have been pitching this to the potential suitors. By the time Oracle bought Sun, they knew that they would be going after Google and anyone else with a big, fat checkbook that did not have a licensing deal in place.”
Immediately after the Sun purchase, Gosling left Oracle along with other Java lumninaries, including Sun’s open source chief Simon Phipps. De Icaza believes they knew about the impending lawsuit and had signed non-disclosure agreements.
Oracle’s acquisition of Sun faced strong opposition from open source advocates, particularly those supporting the MySQL database which Sun owned. Oracle has specifically tried to placate MySQL users but said very little about Java since the merger completed.
“I consider this a patent attack on free software and open source,” said Florian Mueller, founder of NoSoftwarePatents, a campaign group which does what its name says.
Mueller suspects that the Oracle suit appeared out of the blue, without attempts to negotiate. “Since Oracle doesn’t claim to have made a good-faith attempt to resolve the issue amicably, it’s certainly possible (unless information to the contrary surfaces later) that this is a hostile, aggressive and destructive move on Oracle’s part.”
If the patent suit goes in Oracle’s favour, the likely result is a payment from Google to Oracle: “I would like to think that this is going to be solved with a quick settlement where Oracle will shake Google for a few billion dollars and the entire matter will be put behind,” said de Icaza.
However, he doubts whether this would help other software makers using Android: “Oracle will likely want to settle with Google under terms that will only cover Google’s own use as they want to go shaking other OEM trees for more cash.”
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"Oracle planned this lawsuit before it bought Oracle..."
"Rather than licence Sun’s Java technology, Sun built its own Dalvik virtual machine which can translate and run Java code."'
This author needs to clean up his writing.
I think there is a typo. It should read:
Rather than licence Sun’s Java technology, GOOGLE built its own Dalvik virtual machine which can translate and run Java code
Down with the evil empire that is Oracle - they poison everything they touch!
Matthew Johnson • Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, has quite a reputation for aggressive lawsuits. But this time, he has made a major error: he is suing someone who has both the resources and the will to oppose him all the way.
Google will, if necessary, challenge ALL the patent claims in a court of law. Since the claims are ridiculous, ignoring a great deal of prior art, they will collapse there.
Nor should this surprise anyone, since the US PTO has been far too sloppy for decades: they have been granting patents to ideas that really are obvious, or really have prior art. It has been especially bad in software patents, which is one of the reasons world-famous computer scientist Donald Knuth has always condemned software patents as a bad idea, suppressing innovation and retarding the progress of the science.
See http://eupat.ffii.org/gasnu/knuth/index.en.html for the details. Particularly pertinent is the line, "There have been an awful lot of software patents in the U.S. for ideas that are completely trivial, and that bothers me a lot."
Now that Oracle has made the mistake of going up against Google, maybe we will really luck out: Google will set the legal precedent for overturning a LOT of frivolous software patents. Then again, maybe I am just being too optimistic;)
Don't get hung up on the typos!
The gist is that Oracle purchased, with the express intent of making multiples of the purchase price back by aggressively attacking anyone using Java in a way they deem inappropriate.
So Google developed their own way of translating Java code. They've not changed anything. Do they charge for the use of the Java-capable component of the Android OS? I don't know. I'm sure they do license the Android software generally.
Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, has quite a reputation for aggressive lawsuits. But this time, he has made a major error: he is suing someone who has both the resources and the will to oppose him all the way.
Google will, if necessary, challenge ALL the patent claims in a court of law. Since the claims are ridiculous, ignoring a great deal of prior art, they will collapse there.
Nor should this surprise anyone, since the US PTO has been far too sloppy for decades: they have been granting patents to ideas that really are obvious, or really have prior art. It has been especially bad in software patents, which is one of the reasons world-famous computer scientist Donald Knuth has always condemned software patents as a bad idea, suppressing innovation and retarding the progress of the science.
See http://eupat.ffii.org/gasnu/knuth/index.en.html for the details. Particularly pertinent is the line, "There have been an awful lot of software patents in the U.S. for ideas that are completely trivial, and that bothers me a lot."
Now that Oracle has made the mistake of going up against Google, maybe we will really luck out: Google will set the legal precedent for overturning a LOT of frivolous software patents. Then again, maybe I am just being too optimistic;)
I think the real reason for suing is that Google have effectively redefined what mobile java is although they don't actually call it java. There is also licensing spat since SUN went for GPL which greatly complicates development by commercial entities. This forced Google to start from scratch developing java once again. It is hard to see anything positive coming out from this but I hope that Oracle eventually sticks to server-java and lets Google continue with their mobile (sort-of) java.
I think this is bad for business. It could stop potential manufacturers and software companies from embracing Android. On the other hand it could hurt Java platform in general as people will have second thoughts about using other open source projects. Bad news is that Oracle has a case here and they may win. Remember Sun's case against Microsoft few years ago? They won...
Oracle has hurt Java tremendously with this move. And this move will hurt another favorite of mine, MySQL as well. It remains to be seen if Ellison will ultimately make some money for himself or he hurt himself with this.
Calin-
if you are referring to Sun's suit against Micros oft for producing their own polluted version of Java, which they named J++ and eventually flopped, that case really was different. Sun did the right thing, and they really did have the better case.
But this time, Oracle isn't even referring to any "standards pollution" on Google's part. Instead, they are basing the case almost entirely on software patents which, as Knuth points out, are mostly invalid patents in the first place. So the comparison between the two cases is weak. Google has the better case this time. They also have to will to win this one in court. They may even set a precedent that will weaken the stranglehold such bad software patents have on the industry.
Maybe I'm over-suspicious, but I'm starting to believe that this was genuinely pre-planned, and pitched to Oracle as one of the assets of Sun. In other words, Sun had created a standards and patent model for Java which could be turned into a revenue stream, and left it to Oracle to do the dirty deed...