Mobile Java: Oracle v. Google ...
... may be the tip of an iceberg.
>> Oracle Announces Cellular Intent, Aims Legal Broadside at Google
Peter White
Rethink Wireless
13 August, 2010
rethink-wireless.com
In a brief one line email Oracle announced its intention of playing a major role in the cellular industry, just a year after buying Sun Microsystems, the author of Java. Oracle kicked off its campaign by filing suit against Google for breach of copyright and patent infringement within Android.
The move is unlikely to be an isolated incident, and given the thrust of the California software house's argument - that Android relies on many aspects of Java, some of which the software giant says are not protected by open source - suggests that the widespread use of Java on phones is finally going to be something that Oracle and Sun want payment for.
Oracle said simply that, "In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement."
Java was developed under the GPLv2 agreement, and the open nature and habitual championing of open source characterized Sun prior to Oracle buying it. But Oracle and its celebrated CEO Larry Ellison, is a far more contentious player in the industry - perhaps best typified in the unauthorized biography called God and Larry Ellison. The title rests of the joke, "What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison? - Answer: God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison."
Sun was pounded by critics for years for not making more money from the creation of Java, but underselling a technology he controls is never a mistake that Ellison is likely to make. If he can force Google to pay Oracle royalties for Android, or allow Oracle to seek it from handset vendors and operators - he could either cut himself a big slice of the royalty pie in cellular, or else completely derail Android.
The suit was filed in the Northern Distict of California. At issue are seven patents, which Sun claims: numbers 6,125,447; 6,192,476; 5,966,702; 7,426,720; RE38,104; 6,910,205; and 6,061,520,
Three of these relate to using protection domains for security, controlling access to resources and interpreting functions on a virtual machine, effectively the ideas behind Java virtual machines, the mechanism which gives SIM cards their innate security. And the rest relate to how classes are created and treated in run time systems.
Oracle will hope to get the Court to force Google to stop shipping Android which will make it come to financial terms with Oracle. There must be huge doubt however over whether ideas which are free to use under a GPL open source license can also, at the same time be part of a patent action, especially as there is an enormous amount of prior art on these technologies. Most US courts dealing with technology have taken a dim view of companies making statements to standard bodies which effectively hide the fact that royalties are going to be due once a system is widely used. So it is unlikely that any court will allow Oracle any kind of summary judgment and instead this may be seen as an opening shot, simply declaring Oracle's view that Java needs to be paid for in some way.
Contributors to Java over the years may be angry at their code being used to make Oracle money, but Oracle seems to be saying that people can only use the ME edition of Java if any changes they make to Java are published openly and if they don't then they must pay a license fee. That would put operators in the difficult position of having to publish their source code, something they might be loathe to do. The Enterprise edition of Java has an exception to this rule, but not the ME version. A while back Sun was supposed to have merged the two editions, though under Oracle this may well have been reversed.
The core to the problem is the use by Android of a Java Like virtual machine called Dalvik, which contains much of the run time libraries of Java, and although it is described as Java-like, it has not been called Java, which Oracle says is also a breach of its trademarks as well.
Whatever the outcome of this suit, it seems that Oracle is finally aware that its technology lies at the heart of both identity management and virtual machines in handsets, and it plans to exploit that position financially under its new ownership. ###
>> Oracle sues Google over Java Use in Android
James Niccolai
DG News Service
August 12, 2010
computerworld.com
Oracle has filed a lawsuit against Google, charging that its Android phone software infringes Oracle patents and copyrights related to Java, Oracle said Thursday.
"In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement," Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement.
The suit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco and seeks a jury trial.
Google could not immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems' Java technology when it bought the company earlier this year. Java is a software environment that allows applications written in Java to run on virtually any computer so long as it has a Java virtual machine installed.
When Google developed Android, it included a Java compatible technology called Dalvik with the phone OS. Dalvik was developed as a "clean room" version of Java, meaning Google built it from the ground up without using any Sun technology or intellectual property, said Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney.
"You can't just take a Java application from a Sun environment, where it's licensed, and run it on Android. You have to recompile it to Dalvik," Dulaney said.
Oracle says Dalvik is a competitor to Java and infringes several of its patents, which it lists in the complaint, and its Java copyright.
It was unclear Thursday whether Oracle approached Google to discuss its concerns before it filed the lawsuit.
Oracle's motivation was probably Android's recent success in the smartphone market, Dulaney said. "They own Sun now and they want to collect the royalties on the language," he said.
Oracle alleges that Google was aware of its patents and "willfully and deliberately" infringed them. It also says Google hired some of Sun's Java engineers. It wants the court to block the alleged infringement and award it damages.
Dulaney said Oracle's case could be "hard to prove" and that a legal battle could take a long time. "What they'll have to argue about is whether Google did a purely clean-room Java or if they have someone with inside knowledge of the code," he said.
Dalvik is one option for writing Android applications; developers can also use HTML 5 and the C language. But Dalvik is used for some of the core Android applications, such as email, Dulaney said. ###
- Eric - |
