Good news on the Oracle-Google-Android lawsuit. The final claim of the following ridiculous patent has been removed from the case:
transitory electrical and electromagnetic signals propagating through some medium, such as wires, air, or a vacuum
What the hell were the people thinking that granted this patent in the first place?
If you have time and are interested to read up on the Oracle-Google-Android lawsuit, then check out this extensive write-up at Groklaw.com linked below.
Google uses Java components in their Android OS that were built by IBM. Now that IBM drops support for these components and jumps on the OpenJDK train together with Oracle, things get trickier for Google.
My guess is that this lawsuit is going to take a very long time to come to a conclusion…
Google has filed a response to Oracle’s lawsuit filed in August, denying infringement on any of Oracle’s intellectual property. The company not only argued that it had not crossed any of Oracle’s patents, but even if it did, the patents should be ruled invalid and unenforceable. Additionally, Google said that Oracle shouldn’t be pointing fingers, as Oracle itself is practicing double standards when it comes to the open sourcing of Java.
Oracle originally accused Google of both patent and copyright infringement over its heavy use of Java in the Android software development kit. At the time, an Oracle spokesperson stated flatly that Google “knowingly, directly, and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property” when developing Android.
According to Google, those accusations are completely baseless, and the company takes things a step further by pointing out that the “open source” nature of Java isn’t quite so open source after all thanks to Sun. Basically, Google argues that Sun had released much of the source code for Java 2 SE under the GPLv2, which “contributed to its widespread acceptance among software developers,” but that the company later required developers to demonstrate compatibility with specific Java requirements in order to obtain a license.
Link : ars technica – Google opens up can of open source worms in Oracle Java suit
