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posted by janrinok on Wednesday March 28 2018, @05:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-change-again dept.

Oracle v. Google: Appeals Court Rules That Google Violated Oracle's Copyrights

A federal appeals court has ruled against Google in the Oracle v. Google legal war over the use of Java in Android. However, the case could move to the Supreme Court, a full panel of the appeals court judges, or to a third trial in district court:

An appeals court said on Tuesday that Google violated copyright laws when it used Oracle's open-source Java software to build the Android platform in 2009.

Tuesday's ruling is the latest development in a topsy-turvy eight-year battle between Google (GOOG) and Oracle (ORCL).

Oracle first brought its case against Google in 2010, claiming that Android infringes two patents that Oracle holds on its Java software, a ubiquitous programming language powering everything from phones to websites.

In 2012, a jury determined that Java does not deserve protection under copyright law. Two years later, an appeals court overturned the ruling, raising the question of whether Google's use of Oracle's API violated copyright law.

A jury determined in 2016 that Google's use of Oracle's APIs was legal under the copyright law's fair use doctrine, which allows the free use of copyrighted material under specific circumstances. Oracle appealed the decision, and a judge took its side on Tuesday.

Also at Bloomberg and The Verge.

Federal Circuit Sends Oracle v. Google Back for Third Trial

A while back Oracle sued Google various aspects of their clean-room Java reimplementation and Google initially won that back in 2012. However, appeals have dragged the case out. At issue now is whether APIs can be restricted under copyright.

The Federal Circuit has ruled for a second time in Oracle v. Google, the software copyright lawsuit over Google's Android platform. The new decision reverses the district court yet again and sends the case back for a third trial to determine damages for Oracle. In the last trial, Oracle sought almost $9 billion in damages.

The litigation has been dragging on for about eight years now, bouncing up and down through appeals and two whole jury trials. [...]

Obviously, whether APIs can soon be restricted by copyright would defeat the purpose of an API as well as have severe repercussions for all software development occuring in the US.

From The Verge : Federal Circuit sends Oracle v. Google back for third trial.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Wednesday March 28 2018, @06:47PM (9 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @06:47PM (#659627)

    Oracle (One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison) is a very rich corporation, but they're suing for $9 billion in damages so they're willing to blow a lot of money on their team of ninja lawyers in order to win the case.

    Google may be a bag of dicks as well, but at least they're taking the logical side on this one. One of the Sun employees who got acquired by Oracle and then quit compared [youtube.com] Oracle to a lawnmower: "You can't expect the lawnmower to have empathy. The lawnmower doesn't even know what empathy is."

    Really seems like Oracle snuck into its competitor's building late one night and is busy burning it down around themselves. But they don't really create anything themselves, they just buy out other companies with successful products, so I guess they just don't care.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @08:25PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @08:25PM (#659667)

    who makes Oracle's relational database / which successful database company did they acquire to get it?

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday March 28 2018, @08:50PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @08:50PM (#659677)

      Yes, that's the one fucking thing Larry Ellison has actually done from a productive standpoint with the business.

      --
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    • (Score: 3, Touché) by tibman on Wednesday March 28 2018, @11:44PM

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 28 2018, @11:44PM (#659765)

      MySQL : P

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    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 29 2018, @02:46AM (3 children)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday March 29 2018, @02:46AM (#659827)

      They didn't acquire anyone to get that, they developed that from scratch, I think starting way back in the late 1970s or early 1980s. It's the whole reason Oracle became the company it is; it's their cash cow. It's much like Microsoft and Windows (except MS got a little springboard by acquiring QDOS and getting themselves a big IBM contract with that). You can even see it in their name, "Oracle" (the ancient Greek mythological figure that you'd ask to tell you your future--a SQL RDBMS you ask questions using a query language). They've had that name since the beginning.

      Most highly successful companies have some product/service they've had since the beginning, and which was hugely successful, and from that (the "cash cow") they've been able to expand and buy up other stuff. There aren't that many companies where their original claim-to-fame is gone, and usually those companies are very old, and not tech companies.

      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 29 2018, @03:10PM (2 children)

        by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday March 29 2018, @03:10PM (#659992)

        Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 with Bob Miner and Ed Oates under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL).[citation needed] Ellison took inspiration[5] from the 1970 paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database management systems (RDBMS) named "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks."[6] He heard about the IBM System R database from an article in the IBM Research Journal provided by Oates. Also derived from Codd's theories, Ellison wanted to make Oracle's product compatible with System R, but failed to do so as IBM kept the error codes for their DBMS a secret. SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc (RSI) in 1979,[7] then again to Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982,[8]

        So if by "from the beginning" you mean "5 years after they were founded," sure.

        And the name allegedly comes from a CIA project codename, as the CIA was their first customer. So not only is Ellison a massive, gaping asshole for various other reasons; he also made his fortune by working for the national spying apparatus. [gizmodo.com] Nice.

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        • (Score: 1, Redundant) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 29 2018, @03:22PM (1 child)

          by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday March 29 2018, @03:22PM (#660001)

          So not only is Ellison a massive, gaping asshole for various other reasons; he also made his fortune by working for the national spying apparatus. Nice.

          What's wrong with or assholish about that? Working for the national spying apparatus is working in the interests of the American voters. If you don't like it, you shouldn't vote for it, but voters consistently vote for it, so we can presume that it's what they want. They certainly don't make a big campaign issue out of and vote according to that issue, like they do with guns and abortion.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @05:42PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @05:42PM (#660089)

            "but voters consistently vote for it, so we can presume that it's what they want."

            don't be ridiculous

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday March 29 2018, @05:35AM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 29 2018, @05:35AM (#659852) Journal

      That it is successful is really absurd, but I agree it's true. The company I was working for once bought an Oracle license, and hired their recommended contractors to develop a rather simple database using it. After a year they didn't even have a working dialog box.

      Now I don't really know that this is because their database is so bad. It may just be that Oracle certified developers are that bad. But it was really appallingly bad. But both groups got their money.

      --
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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday March 28 2018, @11:41PM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 28 2018, @11:41PM (#659761) Homepage Journal

    They did quite a fine job of not creating Cover Oregon.

    Oregon eventually gave up on it then started using healthcare.gov.

    Several months after the... uh... "launch" of Cover Oregon I tried to use it for my own healthcare needs, but was informed that it only worked with Internet Explorer.

    Last I heard Internet Explorer doesn't run on Mac OS X.

    The state and oracle are now suing each other.

    For a low, low consulting fee I could have provided expert advice on web application developers:

    Anyone but Oracle.

    However they never asked for my expertise.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]