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Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

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Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#141

Post by mSparks »

solotronics wrote: post #26
suyash wrote: post #18

Today is a sad day for Silicon Valley. Our legal process has demonstrated how incompetent it is when it comes to Technology IP protection.

How so? My understanding was that Oracle was suing Google over the use of an API. This seems quite unreasonable to me but that could be due to my tech background and lack of legal knowledge.

While I don't really agree with the OP, I totally understand the sentiment. It's really an acute issue between legal copyright and the new reality of modern computing. It used to be that copyright sustained our industries. Pottery, Pattern designs on fabric, and later music and films.

In the modern world however, it seems positively damaging, with the likes of China, with no respect for IP and copyright rocketing ahead, most of the innovation happening in the west is in ways to bypass it, GNU is Not UNIX, Lame ain't an MP3 Encoder... and the old guard that depended on the old way falling ever further behind.

In the days of getting material simply by asking a computer to fetch what you want (and nothing more than a few watts of electricity being consumed to do so) copyright simply doesn't make sense in any respect.

But I suspect that opinion is just as unwelcome as the OPs.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#143

Post by monocasa »

farcical_tinpot wrote: post #58
rayiner wrote: post #12

These are the statutory fair use factors the jury was required to consider (17 U.S.C. 107): (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential…

It wasn't even really a case (like say, Samba) where copying was necessary to interoperate with a closed, proprietary system. Samba never copied anything. The interoperability argument was simple. Google wanted to use a language that was familiar to most and where developers could take existing code and port trivially. There are developer tools on the market that have done that for decades. Davlik isn't drop-in compa…

> Samba never copied anything.

According to this case, they did.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#144

Post by farcical_tinpot »

zerocrates wrote: post #63

See, as ever, Florian Mueller for a... different perspective: http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/oracle-v-google-jury-find...

Funny how he mentions a rigged trial, which is exactly what the Supreme Court ruling was. However, they declined to hear again which could effectively mean "You got your copyrighted APIs, now fuck off".

Mueller is so discredited he doesn't have any weight at all.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#145

Post by revelation »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #138
revelation wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already the retrial, I'm pretty sure it's dead now.

Nope. Oracle can appeal to the Federal Circuit.

Of course they can. But appeals typically have little chance of success, and a case that has already gone all up the appeal chain once and had a complete retrial?

No way.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#146

Post by ars »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #135
jcdavis wrote: post #5

What is the room for appeals here? This is a massive ruling, heres to hoping it stands

Oracle can appeal all they want to the CAFC. Overturning a unanimous jury verdict is a herculean task.

Am I correct that they can only appeal an incorrect application of the law, but not the facts of the case? (Including the facts the Jury has decided.)

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#147

Post by lallysingh »

tostitos1979 wrote: post #125

Despite the win, I think it would have been far better for the computer industry if Google had bought Sun. Unlike other companies with crap (IMHO ... Nokia, Motorola), Sun actually had stuff of value. This is a lesson that geeks get but I'm not sure MBAs do or will ever get.

Agreed. Google may have made a better steward of Java than Oracle. But I don't know what tech Google would've directly benefitted from. They could've ported dtrace and zfs (and changed licenses) to Linux.

But they'd have to keep all those support contracts going, which is a pain. That's more Oracle-side.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#148

Post by cheald »

xyzzy4 wrote: post #142
davis wrote: post #104

If you found Sarah's coverage of the trial useful, she is accepting payments on PayPal since she was doing it with her own money: https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/731687243916529665

It costs her money to post on Twitter?

It costs her time, at a minimum, which comes at the opportunity cost of other money-making ventures.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#149

Post by jsprogrammer »

igravious wrote: post #128
grellas wrote: post #120

Law evolves and the law of copyright in particular is ripe for "disruption" - and I say this not as one who opposes the idea of copyright but, on the contrary, as one who strongly supports it. It is right that the author of a creative work get protection for having conceived that work and reduced it to tangible form. Developers do this all the time with their code. So too do many, many others. Many today disagree wit…

Wow, your comment doesn't even fit in its entirety into my browser window without scrolling. :) For posterity you may want to edit "No one has a stake is seeing that Oracle be awarded $9", I'm not sure how to parse that. I didn't find any other typos or grammar mistakes which is pretty amazing for a chunk of prose of that length (at least it is for me.) Don't know why you're being downvoted for giving such a comprehe…

Effort for effort is eye for an eye fallacy.

The OP seems to make some mistakes of fact. The decision was not Alsup's, but the jury's finding of fact: Google's use is fair even if API's are copyrightable (Alsup believed they weren't).

For the quote you don't understand, I believe the mistake is only in a single character, 'is' should be 'in' (to which I present Larry Ellison as the central counter-example).

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