Google fighting to suppress evidence Android willfully infringed upon Oracle's Java - Page 4

You need to correct your signature - Steve in 2012: iCloud, not our finest hour - He was referring to mobileme not icloud. You don't want to googlize reality do you?

This is only true if you already control the copyright. All governments give the copyright holder the exclusive right to decide distribution. That's absolute.



This is again not true. The inability to find a copyright holder does not mean that you have the right to use the work as you see fit. It means just the opposite. It means that you cannot use the work. The EU adheres to these conventions. It's one reason why when getting DVDs of Tv shows, both here, in the EU, Japan, and other places, you will sometimes find that the original music is not there. That's because all of the copyright owners cannot be found. If one cannot be found, then the work cannot be used. So if there are ten copyright holders, and nine say you can use, or license the work, but you can't find the tenth, then you can't use the work. Period!

There are a few countries such as the former USSR, and I believe Russia today to a lessor extent, that were not part of the international copyright, trademark and patent system, and so things were, and are a bit complex regarding works from there being used elsewhere, and works from elsewhere being used there.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, let me present to you an email that Google's been trying so hard to hide from you...."


BOOM!! END OF TRIAL!!

Google goes down like a little b1tch just like that!!


You have no escape Google you are going down!

I did not say any and all communication is privileged. I said that the official email could fall into that category. http://http://www.aigclaw.org/tic51.html
This link I found details what would and would not fall under privilege. If Google was simply asking business advice then no it's not privileged but if it were legal advice then no. Also, just because the CEO asked a question doesn't erase privilege. But as I said previously, that point is moot because Google's problem is that it is a draft of an email and NOT the email itself.

Infringing a patent isn't theft. Not legally, not morally, not factually, not in any way.
If it was theft then you would be sent to prison for it and the state would handle the prosecution. The fact that theft is immoral is completely irrelevant.

Of course. One thing I agree with Google's Drummond about is that a modern technology device contains many patents. I don't agree that it's 250,000, as he said, but it's certainly a lot. No company can possibly research all of the possible patents they may be using. It's just not possible!

But, there are technology journals out there, a number on the web, such as eeTimes. There is no way that engineers don't read these, as they discuss new technology in detail, and no matter how much you know, you need to keep up. So while a new device may use 5,000 patents, all companies in the industry will know of the most important several hundred. After that, they become increasingly more obscure.

In fact, I believe that many companies who hold a large number of these obscure patents have no idea if they are being violated in most cases. Manufacturers rely on companies with these patents to contact them if they think they're being violated.

They may be, and they may not be. It's a really tough question.

In this case, it seems resolved that Google knew from the very beginning that they were in violation. The judge has told Google several times now that they should resolve this out of court because they knew they willfully violated. Google is spending their time on attempts to keep evidence out of court, and knocking down the possible cost of the violation.

Here is the best article out there (I believe) right now. It's from Fosspatents. It really looks like Google is screwed.

http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011...ling-over.html

That is absolutely false. It had nothing to do with permission. Rather, the issue is compensation. Google wanted to reprint every copyrighted and uncopyrighted work and distribute it without compensation to the authors. They were proposing an 'opt-out' method of authors having their work excluded, but the plan was for Google to make everything else available to the public (for a fee). That is a blatant infringement of the author's rights.

[QUOTE=cloudgazer;1916558]As I explained in an earlier post, there is definitely a requirement to pay the songwriter/composer a license, but there is generally no requirement to get permission to record - even for sale, though it does depend on jurisidiction. /QUOTE]

Again, permission is not the issue. The issue is that Google wanted to be able to copy and distribute work without compensating the copyright holders.

Later, the plan was modified - to the point where Google would set a side a tiny amount of money to distribute to authors without the author being able to set the price. That is, Google would tell the authors how much they were entitled to receive.

Fortunately (once in a while, the courts get it right), Google's plan is still on hold. I hope the courts are smart enough to completely eliminate Google's copyright theft.


That's ridiculous. If someone buys the full rights to a copyrighted work, they have the same rights as the author originally had. If I create a copyrighted work, why shouldn't I be able to sell those rights to someone? One of the rights that a copyright holder has is to dispose of their work as they wish - and your position basically eliminates that right.

holy CRAP that is cool.

As to Google, meh. I love the products from both companies but am concerned about the behavior of both. However, even though Google sells your info to throw ads at you, at least they let you tinker with the OS more. Good enough for me. Apple as a company is becoming The Man. Like Google of course. I guess this is to be expected as companies become larger. So I suppose all you can do is buy the best tool for the job. Droid is (currently) the best for me.

Knowingly ripping off patented material is maybe a tiny bit evil. Trying to cover it up is perhaps a little bit more evil.

Attacking other companies, whose IP you knowingly stole from, is full on evil. Especially as you undermine them by giving away their IP for free. And to take evil over the top, then you tell the world that you do no evil while tricking hordes of mostly young opensource fans by advertising your sinister IP scheme under the guise of OPEN.

I say YES - Google is conducting corporate evil pretty clearly here.

No they do not, the Shostakovich suit wasn't decided in soviet russia, it was in the good ole US of A. Sorry but you're in complete error regarding the law here. The copyright holder may or may not have absolute rights to control distribution of derived works, all that is certain is that they will have a right to royalties.


Irrelevant. Google was never claiming absolute rights over these books, it was claiming fair use rights to archive and distribute small excerpts except where copyright was demonstrably ended.

Yes it is! Whenever you take something that isn't yours, it's stealing. Just because you aren't able to take the original code and make off with it doesn't mean it isn't theft.

When something wrong is done, whether it's criminal or civil, there is a moral stigma attached. You may not like it, but it's so.

I don't know if Oracle has ever done anything that wasn't just hard business tactics or not. But Ms did a number of illegal things, and it's considered that without that, they would never have risen to the level of what they did, and it started well before Netscape.

But we're discussing Google.

There is no question that Google has acknowledged these patents as being valid.

Be proud, you seem to be the one person standing up for Google - so kudos they need help.

Theft: "A criminal act in which property belonging to another is taken without that person's consent."
Criminal act: "Criminal act is an act committed by a person that violates a law and which is punishable by the government."

OK I know that in our society we like to refer to people with less money who commit acts of "physical" crime as thieves and criminals. That just shows our bias toward those with enough money to hire big lawyers and conduct corporate crime - so absolutely Google knowingly conducted theft. Certainly you won't argue that from a moral or factual position would you?

I don't know where you're getting this, would you care to provide some citations? There are multiple lawsuits and I think you're actually mixing up a lawsuit with judicial oversight of a settlement. If you are indeed talking about The Google Book Search Settlement Agreement then what you're really arguing isn't that Google is doing something wrong but rather that the Author's Guild is acting contrary to its members interests.

It's not "open source" folks - let's call what is it: "stolen source"

Copyright theft can be criminal as well. I have the law for the USA, but it's similar in many other jurisdictions.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506

No actually if you read your own text you'd realize that Google didn't commit theft. They didn't take property and whether or not they're found to infringe they won't be found guilty of a criminal act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(common_law)

The case is a civil one not a criminal one, that's pretty fundamental. Clearly a number of people here need to retake their high school civics course.

As I said earlier, it's complex. But the court has stated that this document is not privileged, and Googles own lead lawyer stated it was in response to a question from the CEO, which is why the court says it's not privileged.

To you.

In actuality, the idea of patent theft is an established one, even though it's not liable to imprisonment.

This is one recent article, and there are dozens, maybe hundreds more.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-ch..._b_508780.html

When a derivative work of a copyrighted item is created, the copyright remains with the holder of the original copyright. If a new copyright is granted, only the new, derivative changes to the work are copyrighted in the new copyright. The original work and copyright still belong to the holder of original copyright.

No one can slighty change a work and claim copyright over the entire work. Doing so is copyright infringement. If it were not, by law, infringement and one could freely modify and change other's works and the copyright them in one's own name, then we would not even be having this discussion -- the concept of infringement would not exist. Nor would copyrights.

An old master can not be copyrighted. It is public domain. If it is re-published in a book, the book is copyrighted and the reproduction of the old master can be copyrighted. But, the old master itself is still public domain.

Copyright can be, in a few instances such as commercial piracy operations, but patents never ever are. Have you read the copyright portion of this suit? The strong part isn't significant and the significant part isn't strong.

I seriously doubt that Google will get a felony conviction for the 750 lines of code that they actually did copy, though they should certainly have to pay damages for them. The api prototypes will almost certainly be found not to be an issue, there's tons of precedent there - Oracle itself would be infringing Microsofts copyright on spreadsheet functions if that was the case.

People are awfully focused on the current issue but Google has a long history of theft. It is good that you remind people of this.

I didn't say the suit was in the USSR. I'm familiar with it. The copyrights were in dispute.


Again, to you. But Google was claiming much more than that. They were claiming absolute rights. It was only after intense negotiation that they changed some of the terms, and they are still wrapped up in court over this.

You're arguing against a position I'm not taking. Let me make it more clear

Person A writes a book and owns the copyright on the book.
Person B scans the book and owns a derived copyright on the scan documents.

Person B's copyright doesn't allow him to distribute his scans fully without respect to Person A's copyright. Consent from person A isn't sufficient to allow person C the right to copy person B's files. The question as to whether person B was legally entitled to take the scan is a different one entirely. Should person A's copyright lapse, person B's copyright may still remain.


In the case of the old master, yes the original is public domain, but since the museum who owns it won't let you scan it yourself you'll never have a public domain digital representation because of the copyright on the derived scan. The scan is itself a reproduction, and has a derived copyright.

Ok, but you appear to be asserting that a composer or songwriter in the US can refuse the right to cover a piece of music, and I can find no evidence of such law. In the EU that may be possible, but not as far as I'm aware in the US. If you're not asserting that then I have no idea what it is you're saying.

Well, we're discussing both copyrights and patents. The concept is that even if the original material still exists in the copyright holders possession, the copies made from it are stolen, and subject to criminal law if done for commercial purposes, under the proper circumstances.

While patent theft isn't subject to criminal law, the concept remains the same. Copying the patent in another work, is still theft. The legal distinction between the two doesn't lessen the moral equivalence. I suppose it does to you, but not to most people.

A lot of law hasn't caught up to what is property in modern terms. It might someday, but that doesn't change the morality of an action.

It's an attempt to brand something theft. It would be like me accusing you of committing a violent assault on logic.

So basically you're saying that although theft is a criminal act and although patent infringement isn't a criminal act, that patent infringement is still theft because it seems like it to you?

Wow, maybe you really are violently assaulting logic after all.

I don't know why "cover" songs are being brought up here. They are still subject to copyright.

I think it is a basic misunderstanding of how this works. If you are doing a secondary recording, you still need to get a license to do it, either from the songwriter(s), or from the agency that handles the copyrights. There is no free ride.

It's a standard way of describing it.

The difference you are having with most people here, because it's not just me, is that you are hiding behind the legal systems' definitions, while we are, you might say, hiding behind the cultural definition of theft.

To us, taking something that isn't yours, is theft.
To you, taking something that isn't yours isn't theft if it's civil rather than criminal.

I think that most of us prefer the general, cultural understanding of what theft means.

That's your typical lack of understanding what someone is saying, or a usual deliberate attempt at convoluting several separate things as though they are one.

You should know very well what I mean. I'm assuming you know you've lost the argument, so you're resorting to nonsense to get things off track.

I'm not hiding behind anything- I'm defending the existing meanings of words whereas you are attempting to redefine them to suit your convenience. If you want to start a movement to have patent infringement made into a felony called patent theft go right ahead, but just be prepared to have EVERY firm in the IT business, even Apple, oppose you.

Until such time as there is a crime of patent theft, we should all accept that infringement isn't the same thing for damned good reasons.


Right, the 'everybody knows' argument. Do I really need to tell you how stupid that is?

If I infringe a patent I take nothing from the patent assignee, especially if the patent turns out to be invalid. If the patent does turn out to be invalid then presumably by your 'logic' the assignee has committed fraud? Or perhaps racketeering?

Everybody knows that if I demand money for something I have no right to then it's either fraud or racketeering right?

No - I'm attempting to demonstrate to you how profoundly stupid your argument is, by asserting something equally stupid in the hope that it might get through. I'm not sanguine of the chances, but I keep trying.

As for convoluting things, you're the one who dragged copyright into the patent discussion in order to bolster the claim that it's theft, before switching to a claim of cultural equivalence. Because that's not muddying the waters at all right?

You have to pay, you don't have to get permission - different things. And you can record the cover without even paying, you just can't distribute. The point is that Google didn't necessarily need consent to scan the books, because the law there is as yet unclear. It may fall under fair use.

You may be correct on a technical detail, but, IMO, you are completely off base.


Stealing is Stealing -- Shit is Shit -- it is as clear as that!


Knowing that what your are doing is covered by another's patent then willfully proceeding is logically, morally and ethically indefensible -- except to those lacking these character traits.

Call it what you will, but it is civilly dishonest and reprehensible behavior -- what many people would call theft.

I think the judge said it best when he warned Google that a lawyer with the email and the Magna Carta could bring them down.

I for one, would like to see the Google management involved put on the stand to publicly explain:

1) what they did and why

2) what advantages did this give Google

3) to what disadvantage did this place Oracle and others including competitors and Android licensees

4) what are fair damages -- including treble damages

5) why Google should not be enjoined from further distribution of Android

These would be some very interesting revelations -- and would help clear the waters in which we all swim

Wait, Google is trying to SUPPRESS information? I thought they were all about open. OPEN! Open always wins! Remember that, Google? What, was that just a saying fabricated to dupe open source zealots?

It's amusing when people go, "Google still isn't evil. Milosevic is evil. Google hasn't committed genocide; therefore, they are not evil." If Milosevic and other brutal dictators are where the line to evil begins, then even Lodsys consists of saints.

It seems that as long as it doesn't rise to the level of criminal behavior, you don't think of it as being wrong. If it weren't wrong, the courts wouldn't address the issue. The reason it isn't criminal is because of expediency. If executives were thrown into prison every time some license was violated, there wouldn't be any executives left to run the company.

In addition, executives are protected against this because a company is treated, legally, as an entity, with certain rights. You can't throw a corporation into the pokey, but you can do the next best thing, which is to make them pay up big.



The everybody knows, or the "I know it when I see it" arguments are a legal framework that even Supreme Court justices use. It was used in the question of what pornography is, famously.

If a patent turns out to be invalid, then, obviously, you aren't taking anything, and so it isn't a part of this discussion at all.

But if it is valid, then it just as obviously is valuable. That you fail to recognize that is amazing! Why have patents in the first place if they aren't of value? The very fact of their existence proves your argument that you aren't taking anything of value to be false.

Ok, but how do you square that away with the first office actions on these patents going mostly against Oracle? If stealing is stealing, and if not licensing a patent is stealing, what is the crime when you license a patent and the patent is invalid?

Is the licensor selling stolen goods? Is it fraud? Is it racketeering? What is it? Do you realize that if you pay license fees for a patent which is subsequently invalidated you don't get any of that money back?

The reason why infringing a patent isn't theft is because it's not clear cut, you don't have absolute title to a patent in the way that you do to say your TV set.

My arguments make perfect sense. It's yours that are lacking. Others brought copyright into this before me. You mentioned this as well. When Google book scanning was first brought up, an argument you joyfully joined, that was well before my post.