Google Sued By Oracle Over Android: Patent Lawsuit Could Cost Search Giant 'Billions'

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Oracle Corp is seeking damages "in the billions of dollars" from Google Inc in a patent lawsuit over the smartphone market, according to a court filing.

Oracle sued Google last year, claiming the Web search company's Android mobile operating technology infringes Oracle's Java patents. Oracle bought the Java programing language through its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in January 2010.

In a document filed in court by Oracle on Thursday, Oracle accused Google of trying to conceal the fact that Oracle's damages claims in the case are in the billions.

Google has redacted large portions of Oracle's damages estimates from recent court filings. Oracle asked the court on Thursday to make some of that information public.

Google representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Oracle America, Inc v. Google Inc, 10-3561.

(Reporting by Dan Levine, editing by Dave Zimmerman)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions

Comments

[Larry Gallant]

07:06 PM on 06/19/2011

are you kidding me? that these companys are talking billions, that is ludacris. i lost my job three weeks ago after being off work for 4 weeks. im wondering how to by groceries for my family. and you have these money hungry corporation talking vulgarand crass, i know im not the only guy out of work but you tell me where its right for these companys to throw around figures that you or i could not count in a whole life time. so i dont know what my total rant is even about my self. but i do feel this stinks for all the crummy reasons. this like bragging that they have more than anyone else.

[maxpain]

11:04 AM on 06/19/2011

Time to drop Oracle's Java and move to IcedTea.

http://ice­dtea.class­path.org/w­iki/Main_P­age

[maxpain]

12:45 AM on 06/19/2011

Going to show once again, it's long past time to end patents on software.

Software is nothing that should be patentable­. It's not like a great new design for a guitar (which would be patentable if sufficient­ly novel/inno­vative). It's like a song played on a guitar (which is copyrighta­ble, but not patentable­).

Patents should be allowed on only real, tangible things. Not software, not genetics, not any form of code. (We also need to get back to the requiremen­t that even those tangible things must be truly novel, non-obviou­s innovation­s and not just obvious incrementa­l improvemen­ts, but that's another story.)

It is literally impossible to write code anymore without infringing on someone's patent. You just have to hope no one cares. That's an insane situation, and it shows how ill-fittin­g patents are to something like software.

[flashfyre]

04:44 PM on 06/17/2011

Oracle has always been a fairly nasty outfit. Hopefully Oracle's Java attack on Google will fail, similar to the way the SCO Unix IP attack against IBM (and other) linux users failed.

What is not mentioned here is the Apple IP attack against Motorola, Samsung, and other users of Google's Android. Apple has a lot of fans, but they have a pretty nasty history of IP attacks, too.

That Samsung galaxy 10.1" android tablet is looking like a game changer.

[SoCalNick]

02:32 PM on 06/17/2011

Billion Dollar corporations,

They ship all of our Jobs out of the country.

Refuse to hire Americans

Pay nearly ZERO in Taxes

Get Free money from the Government that they can now ( thanks to the Right wing SCOTUS) openly BUY politicians with.

NOW Acquire another company so they can sue for BILLIONS they are not due. You KNOW that acquisition had this lawsuit in the numbers when they did it.

Now WHY again should they create jobs??

They don't need anything to survive but Politicians and Lawyers with a few Judges thrown in to boot.

That is all

[imonlyhereforthelaughs]

01:45 PM on 06/17/2011

So did Oracle acquire Sun just so it could sue Google?

[MCope]

11:33 AM on 06/17/2011

Seems to me like the corporate equivalent of stags bashing their antlers and tearing up sods of grass.

[johnOneOne]

09:48 AM on 06/17/2011

Interesting to me is that although Oracle acquired Sun ostensibly to get Java, they lost Java's principal developer, James Gosling, who left because he didn't like Oracle's management culture. He's now at Google.

Indeed, US intellectual property laws now work against their constitutional purpose (Article 1 Section 8 Clause 8) when that kind of thing happens.

[cornel]

09:01 AM on 06/17/2011

Oracle = 0 chance ! Java is open source, besides Android make very small use of the platform they wrote their own JIT compiler.

[the-lexicon]

12:12 PM on 06/17/2011

that's the whole point.

[Vismortis]

08:37 AM on 06/17/2011

Wait how can they sue for damages caused by Google using Java? They give java away for free how can there be damages to Oracle (or Sun) if they never made a direct profit from Java in the first place

[the-lexicon]

12:31 PM on 06/17/2011

They don't give java away for free. However, you're an end user, it doesn't cost YOU anything.

[casaroonc]

07:42 AM on 06/17/2011

What a great plan. First buy a company. Then sue for something you think (I wouldn't know) happened before you owned said company.

Got to love capitalism.

[ThinkCreeps]

07:23 AM on 06/17/2011

If you can't do, sue?

[dtmfman]

06:37 AM on 06/17/2011

wow...the giants in the information industry are fighting over patents...meantime...the country's data is being hacked daily....nice that you're worried more about profits and money....how about your customers' data....or the country's data for that matter...no wonder the gov servers are vulnerable to hackers....we're to busy suing each other...

[bad spelling grammar]

05:32 PM on 06/17/2011

fanned for your micro bio and comment hahah

[any mouse]

04:25 AM on 06/17/2011

I do not think Oracle will succeed if Google has done a good job of keeping Dalvik a clean room version.

Sun has already sued HP (for Chia), IBM (for J9) and several others in the past and lost, so I suspect that Oracle will not be any more successful.

In the end, this might even destroy all value of Java to Oracle.

[elsquibbs]

02:41 AM on 06/17/2011

Give it to me straight, Doc: Can I get hardcore German pr0n on-the-go for free on my new Droid Charge or not?