Oracle Sues Google For Infringing Java Patents 510
Bruce Perens writes "Oracle has brought a lawsuit against Google claiming that Google has infringed patents on the Java platform in Android. Scribd has a copy of the complaint. But there's a patent grant that should allow Google to use Java royalty-free. Has Google failed to meet the terms of the grant?"
Why do you think Oracle bought Sun? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not for MySQL (to kill) or their overpriced shitty hardware (to commoditize). They bought Sun for Java - you know how many other companies Oracle might have by the short and curlies now?
Hooray Patent Minefield! (Score:5, Insightful)
Patent Minefields - helping drive innovation forward!
Re:Why do you think Oracle bought Sun? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like most things in the legal system..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Congratulation ORACLE (Score:2, Insightful)
You're retarded
No, really. Whose idea was that? How's that MBA called? Ok, then Google says, "ok, here's your billion dollars, go away"
Or Google can absolutely block Oracle with its patents and other dirty tricks.
And then MS will have a field day with this.
Of course, Google in using Java in the first place for android, is debatable, still
Re:Sun released Java under the GPL (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah but I think this is about non-sun implementations which use sun/oracle patented techniques.
Re:How ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
That the first competing VM to be throttled by the patent holder would be a Java-based one, not a .NET-based one. I bet Steve Ballmer is laughing his ass off right now saying, "even I'm not that stupid."
Did you miss the part where SUN has (succesfully) sued Microsoft for the exact same thing?
Boies, Schiller & Flexner (Score:5, Insightful)
God, it's like SCO & IBM again.
Stepping on the toes of just one the world's largest corporations not enough for them?
Stallman rolling in his, er, house (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Epic Fight on the way.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is the Android Java *complete*? (Score:2, Insightful)
The "of the current version" clause is interesting: It actually means that as soon as a new version is published, all those distributing the previous version cannot distribute anything until they changed the implementation to match the new specification. Change versions fast enough, and no one will have a real chance to comply.
Boo Oracle (Score:2, Insightful)
Looks like a good reason... (Score:3, Insightful)
...not to use Java.
Re:Hooray Patent Minefield! (Score:1, Insightful)
In this case that's probably accurate but only because Java was, from the outset a poor choice for android. Oracle have provided Google with the opportunity and incentive to remove Java from Android alltogether.
The unfortunate way in which Oracle chose to bring the matter to Googles attention notwithstanding; autohell, C/C++ and luaJIT/V8 make for a more appealing development environment than Eclipse and Java.
Re:Oracle will win (Score:5, Insightful)
- Software patents are not considered valid in the majority of the world, precisely because they get in the way of perfectly reasonable actions.
- Software patents on an "open" standard might not be enforceable if those patents are required to implement that standard, and are the only sensible way to do so. Interoperability with an existing product can't be protected by a patent if that patent is the only (or only sensible) way to do things.
- All the mentioned patents have prior art except one, which is so far worded towards Java only use that it falls foul of the previous statement (I didn't think you *could* patent something that specific to a particular product).
- The Oracle patents are particularly weak, most of them re-iterating 1980's knowledge of programming.
- Google probably has one of the largest patent profiles ever, especially in the area of collating huge amounts of data into a database - this is commercial suicide for Oracle who could well see a retaliatory attack that they just can't afford to defend against (yes, THAT many patents). Google's patents are likely to be MUCH more substantial than these Oracle ones.
- Sun never had a problem with IP protection. You don't need to protect your IP when "Java" is in everything from mobile phones to servers - basically Sun *WAS* Java and not much else before it was taken over, and saw no need to sue anyone at all substantial over patent infringement when it could have done at any time for even more cash.
- Going for Google first is commercial suicide - there will be other, smaller, players using third-party Java VM's.
- Suing immediately is a sign of desperation. Much more conducive to receiving compensation would have been quiet negotiations (there hasn't been ANY time for that since the Oracle takeover) and/or asking them to work around the patent at least. The path chosen is the most stupid and expensive.
- The lawyers here are Boies, Schiller & Flexner - the same ones that handled the SCO case's IP side. That went well for them. *fall into fits of derisive laughter*.
Much more likely is a quiet settlement involving cash, or Google saying "Go for it" and filing a counterclaim for a whole host of patents they own. Google can pretty much take Oracle to the cleaners if it wants. It makes me wonder why Oracle has set itself up to be that target.
Re:Congratulation ORACLE (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right, and I understand that. I have friends developing for android and they say it's a breeze.
But not even the best solution is without faults
Re:Congratulation ORACLE (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sun released Java under the GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Congratulation ORACLE (Score:5, Insightful)
Google isn't really "using Java"; they are using the Java language, but almost none of the implementation or libraries.
Which is why Bruce Perens' blog entry is irrelevant. If he'd bothered to read the text that he quoted, he'd see that the patent grant only applies to complete implementations of the Java SE environment. Android uses Java-the-language but not Java-the-platform, so is not covered by the patent grant. This was intentional on the part of Sun: the aim of Java was 'write once, run anywhere' and this is not possible if various implementations have incompatible standard library implementations.
Re:Stallman rolling in his, er, house (Score:3, Insightful)
RMS is really a great visionary but Oracle actually proves him wrong because he recently warned against Mono, DotGNU and C# because of patent concerns. I disagreed and said that those platforms are the last pieces of software against Microsoft would consider using its patents because those basically help the .NET ecosystem. More importantly, I said that other programming languages are also patent-encumbered, and I mentioned Java [blogspot.com]. That's why I thought it was wrong to single out C#.
Oddly enough, right now -- just a few weeks later -- it looks like C#, which was submitted to a standards body, is actually much safer from a patent point of view [blogspot.com] than Java and much more of an open standard.
IMHO... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oracle may win in court or force a settlement, but I don't think in the long view they will "win" because of this. Potentially they get some money out of "owning" Java, but they make that property less valuable in the process. Java having been picked for Android development is currently breathing a lot of life into the language -- for a while now Java has been one of the top choices for business app developments, but how long has it been since Java was associated with something cool? And what are the odds it'll be picked for something cool ever again now that people see how litigation-happy Oracle is about it?
Being used for cool, high visibility projects buys language mindshare in a way few things do.
*chop* *cut* There, take that, nose! That'll show my face.
Re:All of a sudden iPhone looks like an open syste (Score:3, Insightful)
Why did they choose the Java language? Because they needed a safe, statically typed, garbage collected language that people had experience with and that there were tools for. There is little else out there that fits the bill (C# wasn't an option at the time they started).
Objective-C on iPhone is a pain to learn, but at least the iPhone will not go down in flames from companies fighting over rights to language, runtime, tools and access to application markets.
They could have used python, and even reused Sugar.
Re:Why do you think Oracle bought Sun? (Score:1, Insightful)
Even if that's true, nobody cares. Solaris is also slower than Linux on x86 and vastly more expensive on SPARC, and reliability can be achieved in other ways.
This may also be true, but nobody cares. Solaris is a server OS, and the filesystem is rarely a bottleneck in interactions with servers.
Basically, Solaris is dying because Linux is better in most ways, and Linux is still good enough in all the areas where Solaris actually is better. Sorry to break it to you, but your favourite OS is going the way of BSD. I expect Netcraft will get an announcement out in the near future.
"The Java Trap" -- RMS has warned years ago.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Java should have been avoided, same goes with the Javascript.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html
Re:Like most things in the legal system..... (Score:2, Insightful)
If no laws have been claimed to be violated, there cannot be a lawsuit. The relevant laws in this case are those which say that you may not use ideas for which other people hold patents, unless those people give permission to do so, and those which say you may not copy stuff other people created without permission (unless those people are long dead).
Re:Oracle will win (Score:3, Insightful)
- The lawyers here are Boies, Schiller & Flexner - the same ones that handled the SCO case's IP side. That went well for them. *fall into fits of derisive laughter*.
Did they fail? Novell isn't going to get any money, the lawsuits cost all sides far more than the value under contest, and most of them are still going on.
They failed if you believe that SCO was trying to really win. If their only tactic was to make the case as painful and expensive as possible (ie, to make it as attractive as possible for the defending party to settle), then Boies, Schiller & Flexner were massively successful.
Re:Like most things in the legal system..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Either you're trolling or you don't understand what patent law is.
Re:Sun is to blame (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this isn't "like any other company" or like any other patent portfolio. Sun claimed that Java was an open platform when, in fact, it was highly patent encumbered, by design.
And open source developers had other choices. They chose Java because they erroneously believed that Sun's platform was open.
Complete FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
There is only one latest version of Java (i.e. only one spec). You can be on a Java spec. committee and vote on what goes into next Java version specification, and everyone who wants to make the next version of Java (the language and JVM) has to implement all the same things agreed to be able to call it Java.
This is all to ensure Java's philosophy, write and compile your code once and run it on any platform. This does not mean just different operating system, but java virtual machine implementation from another vendor.
This can work precisely because of the fact that Java is a spec. and to call something Java you must implement the spec fully. This allows me to write my Java code on Windows, compile it on Windows using Sun's JVM implementation and run the compiled code on Mac OS X, with Apple's implementation of the JVM (with no need for recompile or anything on OS X).
This would not be true if Apple cheated and did not implement some part of Java spec (which is the case with what Google did).
Re:documenting it on http://en.swpat.org (Score:4, Insightful)
Now Sun sees everyone hopping on the Android train for all sorts of devices, and no licensing fees coming in from any of them. And they're suing.
Small correction, Oracle is sueing. I personally like to think Sun was more a bunch of business/social-awkward techheads trying to stay afloat with technology, rather then the blood-sucking vampires that run Oracle's legal/licensing department.
Ellison, much like balmer has an air of megalomania about him...
Re:All of a sudden iPhone looks like an open syste (Score:2, Insightful)
If you know C and understand basic OOP, neither Java nor Objective C is harder to learn than the other. I suppose if you learned Java first, unlearning all the bad parts of the language might make Objective C seem harder.
stop making things up (Score:5, Insightful)
Java is a spec and NOT an implementation. You are free to make your own implementation of the spec (IBM, Apple and many others do).
IBM and Apple have not "made their own implementations"; they have licensed Sun/Oracle's implementations and created derivatives.
You are not free to make your own implementation of the spec; you need to pass Sun's compatibility tests if you don't want to get hit by patent lawsuits because Sun hold essential patents for creating a conforming implementation.
For years now, there has been no implementation of Java conforming to the Java spec except for those derived from Sun's source code. That's not an accident: it's pretty much impossible to meet Sun's compatibility requirements without licensing their source code.
This would not be true if Apple cheated and did not implement some part of Java spec (which is the case with what Google did).
Google didn't "cheat", Google implemented their own platform and runtime; they just happened to use the Java language to do it. In principle, Sun/Oracle couldn't have done anything about that: Sun doesn't hold a patent on the Java language itself. But it appears as if the Android designers may not have been careful enough to avoid all of Sun's patents.
Re:documenting it on http://en.swpat.org (Score:3, Insightful)
Now Sun sees everyone hopping on the Android train for all sorts of devices, and no licensing fees coming in from any of them. And they're suing.
Actually Sun's grievances go way back to 2007 [cnet.com] ("Sun's worried that Google Android could fracture Java".) It's just that Oracle's bite is worse than Sun's bark. Oracle see Java as probably the most important part of the Sun acquisition and it's logical they would want to protect it from fracturing as Sun did with MS in the early years. They're too big to be pushed around by Google too which sadly couldn't be said of the waning Sun.
Re:Complete FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Google have implemented 1 and 2 according to the specs.
No, Android does not implement the JVM. Android's Dalvik VM is a register based machine, just like the CLR. In part, that's probably because they wanted to minimize the risk of getting successfully sued by Sun. Let's hope they did their homework.
Not even Sun/Oracle is insane enough to propose that you should use the java standard edition on mobile phones.
No, instead they want you to license their embedded Java implementation, which isn't covered even by the hokey J2SE specs/licenses.
Re:Stallman rolling in his, er, house (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this is a proof of how dangerous is to bet your future in platforms controlled by companies like Oracle or Microsoft. I don't care if mono it's a bit safer to use, it's still dangerous if it's in the hands of a company that can change its opinion depending of what Wall Street does. I think opensource should avoid platforms "owned" by companies in some way and bet into open plataforms like python. Python could be sued for patents, but python itself will never sue anyone.
Re:Is the Android Java *complete*? (Score:3, Insightful)
except that android does not have an acutal java implementation. It has a dalvik VM, which runs non-java bytecode.
The fact that the de facto standard syntax for writing code that gets compiled into dalvik bytecode happens to be java, does not mean an android phone has any java on it.
Larry Ellison is the Rupert Murdoch of Technology (Score:4, Insightful)
A powerful, mean and hateful man - who's wealth and power have brought no comfort to his cramped and ugly little self. The paucity of his humanity is demonstrated with every pathetic grab he makes.
Re:documenting it on http://en.swpat.org (Score:4, Insightful)
Oracle see Java as probably the most important part of the Sun acquisition and it's logical they would want to protect it from fracturing as Sun did with MS in the early years
If they don't want to see Java fracture, they should stop wasting everyone's time with JavaME -- it's been a decade now and no one has ever done anything useful with it -- and embrace whatever's in Android as the official mobile Java solution.
The writing's on the wall.
Re:Sun is to blame (Score:3, Insightful)
Sun made a promise and commitment to make Java an ANSI/ISO standard and they failed to live up to that, period. As a result, the industry is stuck with a proprietary and badly designed language.
I disagree, Sun made a promise.(full stop)
The industry believed them, and as a result is stuck with a proprietary and badly designed language.
NEVER take action based on a companies "promises". Either it's a legally binding agreement, or it doesn't even belong in your decision-making process.
This is the real point of the story (Score:3, Insightful)
People will draw conclusions about Sun, Oracle and Google, about Android and Java, but this is all missing the point.
This is about software patents, which cannot coexist with a functioning software industry.
There are hundreds of thousands of them. No one can read them all, let alone remember them all. Not even Microsoft, Google and Oracle can do it, so they infringe thousands of patents at the end of each day of work. Even if the baby jesus came came down from heaven and granted them perfect knowledge of all patents today, there will be a thousand new ones filed by tomorrow. The entire thing is a money making scam for attorneys and an alternative to free-market competition for some of the larger, more unscrupulous companies. The scheme was invented in a courtroom rather than in Congress. It's so ridiculous on its face that the entire rest of the world refuses to recognize these types of patents, despite years of fevered bribery- I mean, lobbying, on the part of the scammers abroad.
Trying to keep score between Java and .Net on who's playing the patent game better is like arguing over who's burning brighter in a room where everyone is on fire.
If this stuff bothers you, donate time and/or money to the people doing the hard work of organizing a fix, [endsoftpatents.org] and we can end this practical joke on the software profession. We have enough problems with our economy as it is.
Re:Serious questions raised by Oracle patent attac (Score:4, Insightful)
From what I'm reading, it could be python Syntax and it just wouldn't matter. It's the running of code in a bytecode virtual-machine where the patents seem to have bite.
Interpreted scripts are going to be a hard sell to developers, it either needs to natively compile or at least compile into a bytecode blob.
I personally would be resistant in investing hundreds of hours, or millions of dollars in marketing and development for a big title to only have Python scripts being passed around for the world to take and use.
Re:documenting it on http://en.swpat.org (Score:3, Insightful)
That's also only the preamble.
IANAL, but so what that it's in the preamble? The statement is pretty clear itself, it's even preceded with the phrase we have made it clear.
Anyone who distributes the GPLed work is licensed or nobody is.
That's not so. First of all, with the patents it's the "use" that's licensed not the distribution. Second, to me "everyone's free use" means what it says and it's not limited to distributors or program in question only*. Third, if you read the patent section in the license "everyone" includes any person who receives the software "directly or indirectly through you" - that would include pretty much everyone.
* one argument that could be made is that you actually need to get a GPL program to acquire such license; that could easily be satisfied by distributing a small file with every copy of software.
Sun had to license their patents to anyone using the original work or derivatives of the work or they simply couldn't use the GPL.
I still don't see how Sun's patent license - i.e. only for full J2SE implementations - satisfies GPL anyway. There's nothing in GPL that prevents you from removing features from the program and creating another more limited derivative. Since this wouldn't be compatible with Sun's patent license, then was there an implicit license as well that did satisfy GPL?
Definitely interested to see how it develops.
Re:documenting it on http://en.swpat.org (Score:2, Insightful)
I've used some of those DVR and set top boxes.
He said useful...
Whatever your view of television, those boxes are merely there to shorten one's lifespan with rage alone.
Re:documenting it on http://en.swpat.org (Score:2, Insightful)
Alas, no. The patent license allows you to redistribute the Oracle version of Java, and even a modified version of the same. What it doesn't do is permit, in countries that recognize the patents, you to distribute a version that doesn't conform to the Java specification.
That's a problem. That restriction on the patent grant restricts you from modifying the software to no longer meet the Java specification, which is still modifying the software.
That requirement is in conflict with the GPL. You cannot redistribute Java if received under the GPL period, due to that restriction.
Re:documenting it on http://en.swpat.org (Score:3, Insightful)
... Miguel is the author of Mono, so take this with a grain of salt. He's usually the one having an argument against someone saying how everyone should use Java because Microsoft will pull the same type of stunt against Mono some day, so this must be a humorous day for him.
Oh, I dunno. I'd wonder how many developers are looking at this and deciding to use some language other than Java until the courts tell us that it's safe to use Java again.
Not that I expect the courts to say that. More likely, they'll say something that not even IP lawyers understand, and the legal status of our Java code will still be ambiguous.
I think I'll stick to C, perl, tcl and python. Are there any outstanding questions about the legal status of code in those languages?
(15 to 20 years back, I worked for several companies who decided against using Sys/V in products for just this reason. The C libraries there, and thus all binaries, contained AT&T copyright notices. The company lawyers said it was possible that if a product became successful, AT&T could sue for copyright violation, and might win. Using AT&T's libraries was possibly gambling all your profits on the good will of AT&T. So libraries were used that didn't do this. I just checked some binaries of mine on some FreeBSD, linux and OS X systems, and none of them contain copyright notices.)
Re:Sun is to blame (Score:1, Insightful)
Hogwash. Sun didn't fail because of "evil intent.' They failed because of markets, and because two of their traditional markets tanked (one of which was banking which no one saw failing) . The idea that it was obvious is only because you are letting your wants cloud clear judgment. Tech companies don't fail based solely on technologies; engineers have is all wrong. Lawyers rule the word. Deal with the reality of it.