Google Shuns Oracle, Requests Dismissal of Patent Infringement Case
| by Rob Jackson on October 5th, 2010 at 4:41 pm |
In mid August, Oracle sued Google over it’s Android operating system, claiming the world’s new mobile leader was violating 7 patents the company owned and acquired from Sun Microsystems. Not only is Google asking for the case to be dismissed, they’re openly calling Oracle out for their ideological contradiction.
As explained by the Wall Street Journal, Google is drawing negative attention to Oracle by claiming it is “attacking the open-source licensing policies it used to support.” Essentially they’re saying if you combine “the grass is always greener” with “practice what you preach”, “fair weather fan” and a few other cliches that you’ve got the recipe for this Oracle lawsuit.
Described a bit more eloquently by our own Quentny Kennemer:
The infringement pertains to code written in Java - the same Java owned and licensed by Oracle-acquired Sun Microsystems and the same Java that helps power Dalvik and Android as a whole.
This is pretty fundamental, base-level, yet hugely important stuff. I’m no Robert Shapiro, but I’d venture to guess that Google will come out of this whole thing unscathed. They might not get the summary dismissal they want, but I think worst case scenario this gets settled out of court as Oracle realizes they’re hurting themselves and they’re image while they make a hail mary pass while in goal line formation.
Google has already responded once before and even withdrawn from an event because Oracle was participating. Can’t we all just get along? When it comes to market share, profit, and ownership of the lucrative mobile market… it’s become all too obvious that “getting along” is a rarity, although we tend to do it better than most in the Android world.
EXTRA CREDIT: If you can tell why the included picture is relevant, and provide symbolic references to this story and the movie, you will earn the respect of the nostalgic childhood movie gods.
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