Oracle Files Suit Against Google

Not too long ago Oracle filed a suit against Google for allegedly violating its intellectual property rights with the Android mobile OS. According to a judgment submitted this Thursday in the U.S District Court for California's Northern District, the particular date when Google will go to trial has not yet been established.

Cause for the postponement

In accordance with a PCWorld.com report, Judge William Alsup stated in his order that prior to a date being set for the trial, the problem relating to the damages methodology must be solved. To paraphrase, the trial date isn't going to be set until such time as Oracle implements a suitable damages methodology. The date will not be set unless Oracle puts aside virtually all damages except for the ones previously allowed to go to the jury. The actual date for the trial was at first scheduled on or following the 19th of March, however this order adjusted those times. The Judge at the same time stated that Oracle only has themselves to fault for these types of delays as the firm has submitted incorrect methodologies 2 times now. This is going to be the third attempt to submit a damages methodology that is actually acceptable to the judge.

According to Oracles' damage specialist, Google potentially owes nearly US$6.1 billion in damages pertaining to the suspected offenses. However, these allegations ended up being invalidated by Judge Alsup and Oracle is at this point not been able to supply claims which are acceptable to the court.

Additional causative factors

A second problem that is putting off the trial is an impending appeal filed by Google over a provocative email written by Tim Lindholm, a Google engineer. The elements of the email talk about the importance of negotiating a license for Java, because all the other existing technologies don't compare.

Lindholm stated that what the co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, wanted him to accomplish is to find an alternative choice to Java for Chrome and Android. This would be an incredible undertaking given that the technology is essential to numerous sectors. The increasing number of individuals joining classes for training android programming proves this fact. Google has failed several times in trying to keep Lindholms e-mail out of the case. Their grounds for this endeavor was that the e-mail came under attorney-client privileges.

In other filings, Oracle has made application for the trial to be resumed on the earliest feasible date. Even so, the application from Google to the appeals court, relating to the email, is an additional hindrance. Judge Alsup suggested that this difficulty might be solved, if Oracle would eliminate its reliance on that email. Identifying a substitute for Java as implied by Google's co-founders is not an easy mission, because so many firms employ specialists qualified in this language. The expanded utilization of this language in numerous sectors has resulted in an increase in the number of individuals taking java classes.

Originally, Alsup prescribed that the trial should take place in 3 phases, which would require a duration of 2 months. The Judge felt this was more than enough time. He was initially of the opinion that this two month time period was really double what most judges might require in such a trial.