I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.
Yes, to GatorGuy’s credit he stated early in this thread, damages are, well, damages. The courts attempt to ascertain how, and by how much, the defendant damaged the plaintive.
Let’s make up an example. I keep a leased backhoe for a few extra weeks and upon retiring it late refuse to pay the extra time on the lease. In addition, I clogged the thing up with sand causing $50k of damage to it. You, the construction company who leased it to me, sue me and win the case. What do I owe you? Wait, before answering, just know that during those few extra weeks I had your backhoe I dug up an old wreck down at the beach and recovered $700 million in gold.
It doesn’t matter what you did with it. It’s what you owe in late fees, and whatever the contract stated about possible damage payments. But that $700 million would go to the question of whether you could pony up the amount of money the court may state that you owe. In other words, no crying out of poverty, and an inability to shell out the cash.
Exactly. But a lot of folks get off track when they start thinking about the treasure dug up, or in this case, the money Google made directly or indirectly, from Android.
What we could see, though, is if it’s decided, by the lower court, or a jury there, if there is one, that Google knew they needed a license, and deliberately, knowing that, decided to not get one, is a tripling of the damages. That’s very common if it can be shown that this was a deliberate act, and not one made out of ignorance.
I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.
I dont think so. Google clearly understood the value of java. That will be proven on court and the damages will be mindblowing. They will be because of willfull infringment. Basically willfull infringers arent supposed to make a good deal out of the infringment (econimical awarding), the question really is would Android had sucseeded with a new language. Probably not. Hence the economical aspects belong to Oracle.
I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.
I dont think so. Google clearly understood the value of java. That will be proven on court and the damages will be mindblowing. They will be because of willfull infringment. Basically willfull infringers arent supposed to make a good deal out of the infringment (econimical awarding), the question really is would Android had sucseeded with a new language. Probably not. Hence the economical aspects belong to Oracle.
Wouldn't damages typically be based on fact rather than guessing? I doubt any monetary consideration at all will be given to a question about whether Android would have been successful or not today. But courts are fickle things. I suspect there will be a Round 4 unless one of the two finally says enough.
I remember when Android first came out (I was working as a Java developer at the time) and being surprised that they could use Java without paying *some* kind of royalty, even if they did their own JVM implementation. I guess all these years later it is finally agreed that they should have paid something.
Exactly! And I'm sure you could find thousands of developers with the same story. Many of whom very easily transitioned into Android development and ported their apps over. Which benefitted the Android platform tremendously. This is where the real-world, monetary gain of API copying was realized. But all of the developers who are complaining about the API ruling don't see the big picture.
I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.
I dont think so. Google clearly understood the value of java. That will be proven on court and the damages will be mindblowing. They will be because of willfull infringment. Basically willfull infringers arent supposed to make a good deal out of the infringment (econimical awarding), the question really is would Android had sucseeded with a new language. Probably not. Hence the economical aspects belong to Oracle.
Wouldn't damages typically be based on fact rather than guessing? I doubt any monetary consideration at all will be given to a question about whether Android would have been successful or not today. But courts are fickle things. I suspect there will be a Round 4 unless one of the two finally says enough.
I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.
I dont think so. Google clearly understood the value of java. That will be proven on court and the damages will be mindblowing. They will be because of willfull infringment. Basically willfull infringers arent supposed to make a good deal out of the infringment (econimical awarding), the question really is would Android had sucseeded with a new language. Probably not. Hence the economical aspects belong to Oracle.
Wouldn't damages typically be based on fact rather than guessing? I doubt any monetary consideration at all will be given to a question about whether Android would have been successful or not today. But courts are fickle things. I suspect there will be a Round 4 unless one of the two finally says enough.
Show me a product that borrowed some very large portions from others and that didnt pay the others for their work and made a big hit economically. I dont think iknow any such cases where the company even when infringing didnt have to pony up the dough in the end. Now Google is terrified since they actually know the value of Android to their business. And it is a fact that Android would be no business at all if it had not secured those app developers.
This ruling is a lot bigger then this situation. If APIs can now be copyrighted the entire industry will change dramatically. We have copied APIs for decades and it is vital for the tech world we have today.
Heck, Oracle themselves abuse this ruling and re-use APIs.
This is a complex question. No side on this issue is completely correct. The concept that API’s should be available to everyone comes from the legal issue of access. In other words, company A needs to allow access to company B for the purpose of integrating their work into the work of A, when that itself is legally posssible.
so an OS company needs to allow access to developers for the purpose of writing software for their OS. That makes a lot of sense. We also saw Microsoft abuse that in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s after Windows 3.1 came out, by keeping “secret” APl’s For their own software, mostly Office, while denying the necessary API’s to their competitions for the purpose of hooking their software in properly. The court struck what Microsoft was doing down.
interestingly, the court didn’t make it clear as to whether Microsoft needed to share their secret API’s with other developers, only that they needed to have a “Chinese” wall between their systems development, and their client software development, and had to share access for their own developers at the same time as third party developers.
some developers are getting all out of whack over this decision, and I’m not sure they’re correct in it. If Google did get the license their engineers said they needed to, and used it correctly, they wouldn’t be in this position now. But they didn’t. Instead, they almost gutted Java, and wrote a lot of their own code, giving it their own name. If they had licensed Java, they wouldn’t have been allowed to do that. Microsoft got into the same trouble over that. They did license Java, and then proceeded to come out with Java For Windows - a clear violation of the license. They were sued, and the courts slapped them down.
google seemed to think that if they didn’t take out a license, they could mangle the code any way they wanted to. I predicted when this first came out that in the end, Google would lose this.
as for API’s, this case isn’t just about API’s. Those who think it is don’t know the case very well. While API’s are an issue, they aren’t the only one. The neglect to take out a license is the main issue.
but I don’t see how the API issue is so much of a problem. What I see is Google appropriating the APIs for their own use is an issue in that they are attempting to substantially reproduce what amounts to an OS. But this isn’t going to affect developers of software to sit on that OS. So while it’s s problem, it isn’t the overriding one that some people think.
Another factually wrong article on here... DED will you ever write something factual other than embellished nonsense to fit a narrative?
LOL!
Well it's true. Just because Google faces court again doesn't mean they "ripped off" anything. This "article" is written as if it was a done deal, which it has been shown a few times already is not, but that doesn't fit the narrative here.
Actually, you’re wrong. It does show that Google was wrong. It’s just going back for the amount of damages Google should pay.
It's actually a bit confusing. The Fed Circuit initially sent the case back for Round 2 because they ruled a jury should have determined fair use and not the judge. Now after a jury verdict from Round 2 that said it was fair use the same Fed Circuit sends it back yet again saying no jury could find it was fair use. So why did they send it back for a jury trial in the first place? Oh the weirdness we read about courtroom stuff.
And that is one reason why I expect it to be appealed (and heard) by a higher court. The jury really does have to determine fair use (with some guidance of the judge on legal issues) - since fair use is not black and white.
Another factually wrong article on here... DED will you ever write something factual other than embellished nonsense to fit a narrative?
LOL!
Well it's true. Just because Google faces court again doesn't mean they "ripped off" anything. This "article" is written as if it was a done deal, which it has been shown a few times already is not, but that doesn't fit the narrative here.
Actually, you’re wrong. It does show that Google was wrong. It’s just going back for the amount of damages Google should pay.
It's actually a bit confusing. The Fed Circuit initially sent the case back for Round 2 because they ruled a jury should have determined fair use and not the judge. Now after a jury verdict from Round 2 that said it was fair use the same Fed Circuit sends it back yet again saying no jury could find it was fair use. So why did they send it back for a jury trial in the first place? Oh the weirdness we read about courtroom stuff.
It can be confusing. Normally, an appeals court only makes a decision on law, not facts. If the defense, or prosecution, thinks the judge made an error in law, or that the instructions to the jury were confusing, or just plain wrong, they go to appeal. If the appeals court thinks one of those arguments is correct, it sends it back down. Rarely, though it does happen, the appeals court will make a decision on fact if the issue comes back up to it, if it thinks that the decision was so at odds with reality that they can’t abide it.
Another factually wrong article on here... DED will you ever write something factual other than embellished nonsense to fit a narrative?
LOL!
Well it's true. Just because Google faces court again doesn't mean they "ripped off" anything. This "article" is written as if it was a done deal, which it has been shown a few times already is not, but that doesn't fit the narrative here.
Actually, you’re wrong. It does show that Google was wrong. It’s just going back for the amount of damages Google should pay.
It's actually a bit confusing. The Fed Circuit initially sent the case back for Round 2 because they ruled a jury should have determined fair use and not the judge. Now after a jury verdict from Round 2 that said it was fair use the same Fed Circuit sends it back yet again saying no jury could find it was fair use. So why did they send it back for a jury trial in the first place? Oh the weirdness we read about courtroom stuff.
It can be confusing. Normally, an appeals court only makes a decision on law, not facts. If the defense, or prosecution, thinks the judge made an error in law, or that the instructions to the jury were confusing, or just plain wrong, they go to appeal. If the appeals court thinks one of those arguments is correct, it sends it back down. Rarely, though it does happen, the appeals court will make a decision on fact if the issue comes back up to it, if it thinks that the decision was so at odds with reality that they can’t abide it.
that’s what happened here.
Then what purpose does a jury serve? So far both the judge hearing the case in the first trial and then a jury in the second trial case have both ruled Fair Use. Still somewhat confusing what purpose the second trial served. Unless the Fed Circuit got what they had already pre-determined they wanted in a jury finding apparently it wasn't going to be accepted anyway? What an odd and time-wasting system.
This ruling is a lot bigger then this situation. If APIs can now be copyrighted the entire industry will change dramatically. We have copied APIs for decades and it is vital for the tech world we have today.
Heck, Oracle themselves abuse this ruling and re-use APIs.
This is a complex question. No side on this issue is completely correct. The concept that API’s should be available to everyone comes from the legal issue of access. In other words, company A needs to allow access to company B for the purpose of integrating their work into the work of A, when that itself is legally posssible.
so an OS company needs to allow access to developers for the purpose of writing software for their OS. That makes a lot of sense. We also saw Microsoft abuse that in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s after Windows 3.1 came out, by keeping “secret: apl’s For their own software, mostly Office, while denying the necessary apli’s to their competitions for the purpose of hooking their software in properly. The court struck what Microsoft was doing Dow.
interestingly, the court didn’t make it clear as to whether Microsoft needed to share their secret apli’s with other developers, on,t that they needed to have a Chinese” wall between their systems development, and their client software development.
some developers are getting all out of whack over this decision, and I’m not sure they’re correct in it. If Google did get the license their engineers said they needed to, and used it correctly, they wouldn’t be in this position now. But they didn’t. Instead, they almost gutted Java, and wrote a lot of their own code, giving it their own name. If they had licensed Java, they wouldn’t ha ve been allowed to do that. Microsoft got into the same trouble over that. They did license Java, and then proceeded to come out with Java For Windows - a clear violation of the license. They were sued, and the courts slapped them down.
google seemed to think that if they didn’t take out a license, they could mangle the code any way they wanted to. I predicted when this first came out that in the end, Google would lose this.
as or API’s this case isn’t just about API’s. Those who think it is don’t know the case very well. While appi’s Are an issue, they aren’t the only one. The neglect to take out a license is the main issue.
but I don’t see how the API issue is so much of a problem. What I see is Google appropriating the APIs for their own use is an issue in that they are attempting to substantially reproduce what amounts to an OS. But this isn’t going to affect developers of software to sit on that OS. So while it’s s problem, it isn’t the overriding one that some people think.
The Microsoft API issue was only really an issue because Microsoft was basically considered a monopoly - and a gatekeeper. Nintendo or other small platforms that are basically closed (where they are not considered a monopoly) will not be judged the same way. If Apple had become a monopoly and not had a strong competitor in Android -- would have eventually run into the same situation for their mobile devices.
As far as the amount of work to produce an OS with java APIs or developing an equivalent platform with different APIs.... is not a big gap. The gap was in the 3rd party support for the development of applications. Google by using java as the development platform, then translating it into their own platform did not have the chicken and the egg situation where you cannot get developers to develop for it because of the lack of tools, the lack of market etc. The actual VM implementation is a very very small part of the overall picture. As such the use of the APIs were actually for the purposes of compatibility. Microsoft got into trouble over java because they licensed java (which entails a specific specification) then implemented something different than the standard and continuing to call it java (which is likely trademarked).
Another factually wrong article on here... DED will you ever write something factual other than embellished nonsense to fit a narrative?
LOL!
Well it's true. Just because Google faces court again doesn't mean they "ripped off" anything. This "article" is written as if it was a done deal, which it has been shown a few times already is not, but that doesn't fit the narrative here.
Actually, you’re wrong. It does show that Google was wrong. It’s just going back for the amount of damages Google should pay.
It's actually a bit confusing. The Fed Circuit initially sent the case back for Round 2 because they ruled a jury should have determined fair use and not the judge. Now after a jury verdict from Round 2 that said it was fair use the same Fed Circuit sends it back yet again saying no jury could find it was fair use. So why did they send it back for a jury trial in the first place? Oh the weirdness we read about courtroom stuff.
It can be confusing. Normally, an appeals court only makes a decision on law, not facts. If the defense, or prosecution, thinks the judge made an error in law, or that the instructions to the jury were confusing, or just plain wrong, they go to appeal. If the appeals court thinks one of those arguments is correct, it sends it back down. Rarely, though it does happen, the appeals court will make a decision on fact if the issue comes back up to it, if it thinks that the decision was so at odds with reality that they can’t abide it.
that’s what happened here.
Then what purpose does a jury serve? So far both the judge hearing the case in the first trial and then a jury in the second trial case have both ruled Fair Use. Still somewhat confusing what purpose the second trial served. Unless the Fed Circuit got what they had already determined they wanted in a jury finding apparently it wasn't going to be accepted anyway? What an odd and time-wasting system.
Jury is the trier of fact. i.e. the jury is there to determine if Google's use of java was fair use or not - is that a fact or not. The judge usually sets the parameters of what should be considered in the process of determining that fact (if I remember right -- IANAL)
I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.
I dont think so. Google clearly understood the value of java. That will be proven on court and the damages will be mindblowing. They will be because of willfull infringment. Basically willfull infringers arent supposed to make a good deal out of the infringment (econimical awarding), the question really is would Android had sucseeded with a new language. Probably not. Hence the economical aspects belong to Oracle.
Not true. The courts, and those in the business who testified, as well as the experts gathered by the judge, believed that Oracle’s estimations were way too high. It’s not the valuation of Java per se, that’s being decided here, but what Oracle is saying the use of it, unlicensed by Google, is worth. The problem is that often, there must be fairly hard proof that the entity violating the license DIRECTLY benefitted from that violation. Since Google doesn’t sell Android, or the direct derivatives of it, the question is what the damages should be.
we saw that in that several year long trial between Apple and Samsung, damages came down to what percentage of The Whole was that particular feature, here and there, that Samsung took from Apple. Damages were based on that. It’s a very old idea of how damages are calculated. I don’t think that it’s proper though. If Samsung didn’t copy Apple in those instances, how many phones would Samsung have sold? It’s very difficult to determine that.
here, the question is that Android is given away for free. Since Google began “making” phones and tablets under its own name, direct benefits may be able to be shown. But if damages are assumed to be from a percentage of the devices value, what part of that that can be ascribed to Android, since it isn’t sold, but rather, it’s Google’s services that ride on Android, that are sold, or licensed. But since many of those services are available on iOS as well, the issue is even murkier.
I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.
I dont think so. Google clearly understood the value of java. That will be proven on court and the damages will be mindblowing. They will be because of willfull infringment. Basically willfull infringers arent supposed to make a good deal out of the infringment (econimical awarding), the question really is would Android had sucseeded with a new language. Probably not. Hence the economical aspects belong to Oracle.
Not true. The courts, and those in the business who testified, as well as the experts gathered by the judge, believed that Oracle’s estimations were way too high. It’s not the valuation of Java per se, that’s being decided here, but what Oracle is saying the use of it, unlicensed by Google, is worth. The problem is that often, there must be fairly hard proof that the entity violating the license DIRECTLY benefitted from that violation. Since Google doesn’t sell Android, or the direct derivatives of it, the question is what the damages should be.
we saw that in that several year long trial between Apple and Samsung, damages came down to what percentage of The Whole was that particular feature, here and there, that Samsung took from Apple. Damages were based on that. It’s a very old idea of how damages are calculated. I don’t think that it’s proper though. If Samsung didn’t copy Apple in those instances, how many phones would Samsung have sold? It’s very difficult to determine that.
here, the question is that Android is given away for free. Since Google began “making” phones and tablets under its own name, direct benefits may be able to be shown. But if damages are assumed to be from a percentage of the devices value, what part of that that can be ascribed to Android, since it isn’t sold, but rather, it’s Google’s services that ride on Android, that are sold, or licensed. But since many of those services are available on iOS as well, the issue is even murkier.
If it comes down to only calculating damages, I think a reasonable way to estimate the benefit to Google is to use their contract with Apple (I think in the order of 3 billion a year for iOS users - latest contract) as the basis of what the benefit is to Google (Android tm I believe requires google search engine).
I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.
I dont think so. Google clearly understood the value of java. That will be proven on court and the damages will be mindblowing. They will be because of willfull infringment. Basically willfull infringers arent supposed to make a good deal out of the infringment (econimical awarding), the question really is would Android had sucseeded with a new language. Probably not. Hence the economical aspects belong to Oracle.
Not true. The courts, and those in the business who testified, as well as the experts gathered by the judge, believed that Oracle’s estimations were way too high. It’s not the valuation of Java per se, that’s being decided here, but what Oracle is saying the use of it, unlicensed by Google, is worth. The problem is that often, there must be fairly hard proof that the entity violating the license DIRECTLY benefitted from that violation. Since Google doesn’t sell Android, or the direct derivatives of it, the question is what the damages should be.
we saw that in that several year long trial between Apple and Samsung, damages came down to what percentage of The Whole was that particular feature, here and there, that Samsung took from Apple. Damages were based on that. It’s a very old idea of how damages are calculated. I don’t think that it’s proper though. If Samsung didn’t copy Apple in those instances, how many phones would Samsung have sold? It’s very difficult to determine that.
here, the question is that Android is given away for free. Since Google began “making” phones and tablets under its own name, direct benefits may be able to be shown. But if damages are assumed to be from a percentage of the devices value, what part of that that can be ascribed to Android, since it isn’t sold, but rather, it’s Google’s services that ride on Android, that are sold, or licensed. But since many of those services are available on iOS as well, the issue is even murkier.
If it comes down to only calculating damages, I think a reasonable way to estimate the benefit to Google is to use their contract with Apple (I think in the order of 3 billion a year for iOS users - latest contract) as the basis of what the benefit is to Google (Android tm I believe requires google search engine).
Apple has never divulged how much they are paid, nor any other contract details AFAIK. You might be thinking of a guess made by an analyst that got wide reporting, sometimes framed as fact.
Another factually wrong article on here... DED will you ever write something factual other than embellished nonsense to fit a narrative?
LOL!
Well it's true. Just because Google faces court again doesn't mean they "ripped off" anything. This "article" is written as if it was a done deal, which it has been shown a few times already is not, but that doesn't fit the narrative here.
Actually, you’re wrong. It does show that Google was wrong. It’s just going back for the amount of damages Google should pay.
It's actually a bit confusing. The Fed Circuit initially sent the case back for Round 2 because they ruled a jury should have determined fair use and not the judge. Now after a jury verdict from Round 2 that said it was fair use the same Fed Circuit sends it back yet again saying no jury could find it was fair use. So why did they send it back for a jury trial in the first place? Oh the weirdness we read about courtroom stuff.
It can be confusing. Normally, an appeals court only makes a decision on law, not facts. If the defense, or prosecution, thinks the judge made an error in law, or that the instructions to the jury were confusing, or just plain wrong, they go to appeal. If the appeals court thinks one of those arguments is correct, it sends it back down. Rarely, though it does happen, the appeals court will make a decision on fact if the issue comes back up to it, if it thinks that the decision was so at odds with reality that they can’t abide it.
that’s what happened here.
Then what purpose does a jury serve? So far both the judge hearing the case in the first trial and then a jury in the second trial case have both ruled Fair Use. Still somewhat confusing what purpose the second trial served. Unless the Fed Circuit got what they had already pre-determined they wanted in a jury finding apparently it wasn't going to be accepted anyway? What an odd and time-wasting system.
I’ve been on over two dozen juries over the years. Juries serve a very good purpose. But if their decision is at variance with the law, particularly in civil cases, it can be thrown out. I see that as a good thing, not a bad one. Juries are all too often swayed by their emotions, whereas judges are often more dispassionate.
you’re wrong about that. It’s the job of the appeals court to throw a case back when they find a problem. They don’t know what a jury will decide in advance any more than anyone else does. But with proper instructions, it’s hoped a jury will better understand how it works, and make a better decision because of it. If they don’t, it’s their fault, because many of these issues are very complex to the point that a jury can’t understand it, and makes mistakes.
the system is fine. Most of the time the jury makes a good decision, even if not everyone agrees. The appeals court doesn’t have to like the decision, but if it’s thrown up to them again, as long as the decision is in accordance with law, then they’ll leave it stand. But if the appeals court finds that their decision is contrary to law, or to precedent, they may overturn it. They can’t keep sending it back.
This ruling is a lot bigger then this situation. If APIs can now be copyrighted the entire industry will change dramatically. We have copied APIs for decades and it is vital for the tech world we have today.
Heck, Oracle themselves abuse this ruling and re-use APIs.
This is a complex question. No side on this issue is completely correct. The concept that API’s should be available to everyone comes from the legal issue of access. In other words, company A needs to allow access to company B for the purpose of integrating their work into the work of A, when that itself is legally posssible.
so an OS company needs to allow access to developers for the purpose of writing software for their OS. That makes a lot of sense. We also saw Microsoft abuse that in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s after Windows 3.1 came out, by keeping “secret: apl’s For their own software, mostly Office, while denying the necessary apli’s to their competitions for the purpose of hooking their software in properly. The court struck what Microsoft was doing Dow.
interestingly, the court didn’t make it clear as to whether Microsoft needed to share their secret apli’s with other developers, on,t that they needed to have a Chinese” wall between their systems development, and their client software development.
some developers are getting all out of whack over this decision, and I’m not sure they’re correct in it. If Google did get the license their engineers said they needed to, and used it correctly, they wouldn’t be in this position now. But they didn’t. Instead, they almost gutted Java, and wrote a lot of their own code, giving it their own name. If they had licensed Java, they wouldn’t ha ve been allowed to do that. Microsoft got into the same trouble over that. They did license Java, and then proceeded to come out with Java For Windows - a clear violation of the license. They were sued, and the courts slapped them down.
google seemed to think that if they didn’t take out a license, they could mangle the code any way they wanted to. I predicted when this first came out that in the end, Google would lose this.
as or API’s this case isn’t just about API’s. Those who think it is don’t know the case very well. While appi’s Are an issue, they aren’t the only one. The neglect to take out a license is the main issue.
but I don’t see how the API issue is so much of a problem. What I see is Google appropriating the APIs for their own use is an issue in that they are attempting to substantially reproduce what amounts to an OS. But this isn’t going to affect developers of software to sit on that OS. So while it’s s problem, it isn’t the overriding one that some people think.
The Microsoft API issue was only really an issue because Microsoft was basically considered a monopoly - and a gatekeeper. Nintendo or other small platforms that are basically closed (where they are not considered a monopoly) will not be judged the same way. If Apple had become a monopoly and not had a strong competitor in Android -- would have eventually run into the same situation for their mobile devices.
As far as the amount of work to produce an OS with java APIs or developing an equivalent platform with different APIs.... is not a big gap. The gap was in the 3rd party support for the development of applications. Google by using java as the development platform, then translating it into their own platform did not have the chicken and the egg situation where you cannot get developers to develop for it because of the lack of tools, the lack of market etc. The actual VM implementation is a very very small part of the overall picture. As such the use of the APIs were actually for the purposes of compatibility. Microsoft got into trouble over java because they licensed java (which entails a specific specification) then implemented something different than the standard and continuing to call it java (which is likely trademarked).
Of course, being declared a monopoly in one instance could be applied to any entity that has a very high marketshare. Going by that, Google could attempt to have Oracle deemed a monopoly with Java, as it’s the most used programming language, and the largest platform. It wouldn’t help in this case though.
I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.
I dont think so. Google clearly understood the value of java. That will be proven on court and the damages will be mindblowing. They will be because of willfull infringment. Basically willfull infringers arent supposed to make a good deal out of the infringment (econimical awarding), the question really is would Android had sucseeded with a new language. Probably not. Hence the economical aspects belong to Oracle.
Not true. The courts, and those in the business who testified, as well as the experts gathered by the judge, believed that Oracle’s estimations were way too high. It’s not the valuation of Java per se, that’s being decided here, but what Oracle is saying the use of it, unlicensed by Google, is worth. The problem is that often, there must be fairly hard proof that the entity violating the license DIRECTLY benefitted from that violation. Since Google doesn’t sell Android, or the direct derivatives of it, the question is what the damages should be.
we saw that in that several year long trial between Apple and Samsung, damages came down to what percentage of The Whole was that particular feature, here and there, that Samsung took from Apple. Damages were based on that. It’s a very old idea of how damages are calculated. I don’t think that it’s proper though. If Samsung didn’t copy Apple in those instances, how many phones would Samsung have sold? It’s very difficult to determine that.
here, the question is that Android is given away for free. Since Google began “making” phones and tablets under its own name, direct benefits may be able to be shown. But if damages are assumed to be from a percentage of the devices value, what part of that that can be ascribed to Android, since it isn’t sold, but rather, it’s Google’s services that ride on Android, that are sold, or licensed. But since many of those services are available on iOS as well, the issue is even murkier.
If it comes down to only calculating damages, I think a reasonable way to estimate the benefit to Google is to use their contract with Apple (I think in the order of 3 billion a year for iOS users - latest contract) as the basis of what the benefit is to Google (Android tm I believe requires google search engine).
Google pays Apple for the privilege of having Apple keep Google as the default search engine. I’m not sure what that would have to do with this case.
I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.
I dont think so. Google clearly understood the value of java. That will be proven on court and the damages will be mindblowing. They will be because of willfull infringment. Basically willfull infringers arent supposed to make a good deal out of the infringment (econimical awarding), the question really is would Android had sucseeded with a new language. Probably not. Hence the economical aspects belong to Oracle.
Not true. The courts, and those in the business who testified, as well as the experts gathered by the judge, believed that Oracle’s estimations were way too high. It’s not the valuation of Java per se, that’s being decided here, but what Oracle is saying the use of it, unlicensed by Google, is worth. The problem is that often, there must be fairly hard proof that the entity violating the license DIRECTLY benefitted from that violation. Since Google doesn’t sell Android, or the direct derivatives of it, the question is what the damages should be.
we saw that in that several year long trial between Apple and Samsung, damages came down to what percentage of The Whole was that particular feature, here and there, that Samsung took from Apple. Damages were based on that. It’s a very old idea of how damages are calculated. I don’t think that it’s proper though. If Samsung didn’t copy Apple in those instances, how many phones would Samsung have sold? It’s very difficult to determine that.
here, the question is that Android is given away for free. Since Google began “making” phones and tablets under its own name, direct benefits may be able to be shown. But if damages are assumed to be from a percentage of the devices value, what part of that that can be ascribed to Android, since it isn’t sold, but rather, it’s Google’s services that ride on Android, that are sold, or licensed. But since many of those services are available on iOS as well, the issue is even murkier.
If it comes down to only calculating damages, I think a reasonable way to estimate the benefit to Google is to use their contract with Apple (I think in the order of 3 billion a year for iOS users - latest contract) as the basis of what the benefit is to Google (Android tm I believe requires google search engine).
Google pays Apple for the privilege of having Apple keep Google as the default search engine. I’m not sure what that would have to do with this case.
Androids benefit to Google is not in the income they derive but the traffic that they provide to the search engine (and advertising) which is their primary business. As such the valuation of this traffic can be estimated by using what they pay a 3rd party to provide to them.
API is just the interface (e.g. add(operand1, operand2) - i.e. no implementation to that - and implementation is basically 99%+ of the code).
Being able to use an API for compatibility purposes is no different than for example Open Office being able to implement the file format for Word. The need for competition outweighs the argument as an API protected IP. Google's implementation uses the API (common) and then the implementation code which is probably more than 99% of the code base. As long as Google did not copy the code itself the API itself should be fair use. Languages and APIs should not be able to be protected as API.
The court has already previously ruled that you cannot protect interfaces for hardware for the purposes of locking out the competition on things like printer cartridges etc. An API is not much different than the software equivalent.
However, even if you are diehard Google hater - it's not clear whether copyrighting Apis ist a good idea.
I don't think it is. However, I also don't think that someone who knowingly and willingly tries to find a way around a technology licensing agreement for tremendous profit should go unpunished.
Well if you think they shouldn't be copyrightable then you can't object to Google suing them.
I think it's also important to put the work that goes into Apis into perspective. Yes they take creativity. But they are not usually created out fo thin air. The Java API is influenced by countless Apis before it such as C and C++.
Oracle itself has benefited from standing on the shoulder of Giants. I am not aware that they pay IBM for the SQL syntax (admittedly a language rather than API but clearly groundbreaking and which changed the database industry). All the companies that use Hadoop based their work on the original Google 2005 MapReduce paper that outlines MR and GFS (both of which Hadoop implements).
Oracle stands out for being incredible litigious and greedy. We will see who will win the next round in this particular fight.
Forget the world of business and who owns what company. I just have one simple question: do you think what Andy Rubin and company did with Java is right?
In regard to those cases you state, if there are clear cases of licensing infringement (or clear intentional loophole exploitation) there, then I think Oracle should be made to pay. The same way I think that Google should pay for what was done with Java. Regardless of the fact that Java is now open source to anyone, at the time, the intent of Sun was to allow open source usage of Java in educational/non-profit situations, but you had to take a license if it was bundled in a commercial product. Which was pretty standard for the time -- Qt used this model as well.
Business decisions are not dependent on morality as a general rule. So yes let's forget who owns the company.
There's been lots of questionable moves over the years, the highest profile example off the top of my head being Apple's use of Xerox IP and "hard work" design. While it didn't turn out to be found illegal the argument could be made it just wasn't right, that the intent to take it without recompense was there. Yeah some money changed hands but not for the usage that Apple put it to IIRC. After all the court filings from Xerox were over with it wasn't actually illegal tho, even if it might not have been "right" in the view of some folks. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.html Are there similarities here?
Opening the doors to your technology company (Xerox), giving someone a demo of the technology you're working on without an agreement in place, and having them go off and invest 5 or 6 years + a lot of money creating their own, fairly different version of it (including designing custom hardware) is pretty different than having someone willfully look for a loophole in your software licensing agreement (and exploit open source projects to do so with minimal investment of time, effort, or ideas).
So that you're completely OK with. No issue with Android being influenced by Apple design choices then? It's certainly a fairly different version of it, requires years of work and a lot of money, and includes developing custom hardware.
You clearly don’t know the history of xerox parc and Apple. SMH
<br><br> No sir, you don't. Apple paid $1m in Apple shares for the privilege of what it took from PARC Xerox and vastly improved on it to boot.
You sir are apparently the one not familiar with it, and I've no idea what @radarthekat is hinting at. Perhaps he'll expand on his lone sentence.
f you go back at look at the history that's not what Apple gave them stock options for, not that it ended up mattering, and no Apple did not give Xerox a $million in stock.They gave Xerox the right to BUY 100,000 shares at $10/share which Xerox did, spending $1M of Xerox money buying those shares. Apple may have received a double benefit too. Besides getting $1M from Xerox they also may have avoided a patent infringement suit from one of the Xerox divisions, Shugart, by making Xerox an investor. So yeah I kinda get the history. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xerox-sues-apple-computer-over-macintosh-copyright.html
That’s lawsuit was a bit of nonsense. At the time Apple visited PARC, a number of companies were working on the same concepts. The thing that matters here is that while Apple came out with the Lisa, which failed, they then modified it to become the Macintosh, which succeeded.
at the same time, Xerox came out with their own version, which they called the Star. That failed, and as a result, Xerox withdrew from the independent computer business.
this has been a problem for Xeros going back many years. They come up with an idea, and fail to capitalize on it. Apple made major improvements to Xerox’s very primitive UI. When Apple was finished, you could barely see any of Xerox’s work in it. Xerox;s idea for window controls were so,complex they weren’t usable. Other companies working on the concept also had complexity problems. All were eventually abandoned in favor of the much simpler, and intuitive system Apple came up with. So I guess that everyone stole Apple’s ideas. Should they sue everyone else?
My recollection of that story is that Jef Raskin was already committed to creating a graphical UI, and wanted Steve to visit Xerox to validate what they were already working on.
Here's an interview that might be of interest;
Anyone interested should start with a search on Jef Raskin and Macintosh.
Might be appropriate to search on Bill Atkinson as well.
Right on Tmay. I've read the same thing. What Steve was shown at Xerox was apparently far different and more integrated than what those Apple engineer's had in mind. Once Mr. Jobs saw what PARC had developed he reportedly took things in a different direction, inspired by the Xerox efforts to realize how much they could really do with it. And thus the McIntosh interface.
Now, you are totally BSing. You are just making that up. It was just the opposite. Xerox;s work was useless. It was also not too much different from what other companies were working on at the same time. The reason why Xerox invited Apple to come over, was because they had heard that Apple was working on something like that, and they wanted to see if Apple was interested in what they were doing.
but what they were doing was so bad, that Apple couldn’t use it. What Apple came up with was far more elegant. What some of you guys simply don’t understand was that Apple wasn’t looking for a complex, yet simplistic up for computer engineers, which is what Xerox had. They were looking for something that didn’t require a couple of weeks to understand.
its interesting that Xerox made major changes to their U.K. over a few years, still lagging way behind what Apple came up with, and it’s Apple’s vision that succeeded, while that if xerox failed. Even Xerox couldn’t see their computers based on their own system.
Mel, you need to get out more. Read the link TMay offered and then read the one I added. Then compare either/both to what you just said. Your memory seems to be playing tricks on you. I won't accuse you of "making it up".
I recently read that the court is expressing extreme skepticism over Oracle’s valuation of Java. It’s very likely that if Google does lose this, the amount of money involved will be far less that what Oracle is demanding.
Yes, to GatorGuy’s credit he stated early in this thread, damages are, well, damages. The courts attempt to ascertain how, and by how much, the defendant damaged the plaintive.
Let’s make up an example. I keep a leased backhoe for a few extra weeks and upon retiring it late refuse to pay the extra time on the lease. In addition, I clogged the thing up with sand causing $50k of damage to it. You, the construction company who leased it to me, sue me and win the case. What do I owe you? Wait, before answering, just know that during those few extra weeks I had your backhoe I dug up an old wreck down at the beach and recovered $700 million in gold.
Not quite the correct analogy. In your case, the backhoe did not add any value to the gold you dug up with it. The gold would still be worth $700M if you had used someone else backhoe or a shovel. Therefore, the person you leased the backhoe from would not be entitled to any of the $700M. They would only be entitled for the repair cost and lost of use. Unless there was a contract that you would share a percentage of any treasure you find with it, in exchange for a lower lease fee.
With Java and Android, using Java added immense value to Android. Android would not be as valuable today, if Google didn't use Java from the beginning. There was licensing requirements in place, depending on how Java is to be used and Google knew it but chose to ignore paying for one. One can argue that maybe if Google had started from scratch when developing Android, Android might still be where it is today and therefore Java did not add as much value to Android as some are thinking. But that is just conjecture and not up for consideration when determining damages.
The damages Google should have to pay should be large enough to punish them so that they'll think twice before doing something like this again, as the fine will outweigh the profits. But it should not be so small that Google would have no problem doing this again, as the profit would outweigh the fine.
This remind me of the intermittent windshield wiper patent case where the inventor approached the Big 3 Auto about licensing his invention and the Big 3 Auto refuse to pay for one but used the patent anyways.
Comments
so an OS company needs to allow access to developers for the purpose of writing software for their OS. That makes a lot of sense. We also saw Microsoft abuse that in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s after Windows 3.1 came out, by keeping “secret” APl’s For their own software, mostly Office, while denying the necessary API’s to their competitions for the purpose of hooking their software in properly. The court struck what Microsoft was doing down.
interestingly, the court didn’t make it clear as to whether Microsoft needed to share their secret API’s with other developers, only that they needed to have a “Chinese” wall between their systems development, and their client software development, and had to share access for their own developers at the same time as third party developers.
some developers are getting all out of whack over this decision, and I’m not sure they’re correct in it. If Google did get the license their engineers said they needed to, and used it correctly, they wouldn’t be in this position now. But they didn’t. Instead, they almost gutted Java, and wrote a lot of their own code, giving it their own name. If they had licensed Java, they wouldn’t have been allowed to do that. Microsoft got into the same trouble over that. They did license Java, and then proceeded to come out with Java For Windows - a clear violation of the license. They were sued, and the courts slapped them down.
google seemed to think that if they didn’t take out a license, they could mangle the code any way they wanted to. I predicted when this first came out that in the end, Google would lose this.
as for API’s, this case isn’t just about API’s. Those who think it is don’t know the case very well. While API’s are an issue, they aren’t the only one. The neglect to take out a license is the main issue.
but I don’t see how the API issue is so much of a problem. What I see is Google appropriating the APIs for their own use is an issue in that they are attempting to substantially reproduce what amounts to an OS. But this isn’t going to affect developers of software to sit on that OS. So while it’s s problem, it isn’t the overriding one that some people think.
that’s what happened here.
As far as the amount of work to produce an OS with java APIs or developing an equivalent platform with different APIs.... is not a big gap. The gap was in the 3rd party support for the development of applications. Google by using java as the development platform, then translating it into their own platform did not have the chicken and the egg situation where you cannot get developers to develop for it because of the lack of tools, the lack of market etc. The actual VM implementation is a very very small part of the overall picture. As such the use of the APIs were actually for the purposes of compatibility. Microsoft got into trouble over java because they licensed java (which entails a specific specification) then implemented something different than the standard and continuing to call it java (which is likely trademarked).
Not true. The courts, and those in the business who testified, as well as the experts gathered by the judge, believed that Oracle’s estimations were way too high. It’s not the valuation of Java per se, that’s being decided here, but what Oracle is saying the use of it, unlicensed by Google, is worth. The problem is that often, there must be fairly hard proof that the entity violating the license DIRECTLY benefitted from that violation. Since Google doesn’t sell Android, or the direct derivatives of it, the question is what the damages should be.
we saw that in that several year long trial between Apple and Samsung, damages came down to what percentage of The Whole was that particular feature, here and there, that Samsung took from Apple. Damages were based on that. It’s a very old idea of how damages are calculated. I don’t think that it’s proper though. If Samsung didn’t copy Apple in those instances, how many phones would Samsung have sold? It’s very difficult to determine that.
here, the question is that Android is given away for free. Since Google began “making” phones and tablets under its own name, direct benefits may be able to be shown. But if damages are assumed to be from a percentage of the devices value, what part of that that can be ascribed to Android, since it isn’t sold, but rather, it’s Google’s services that ride on Android, that are sold, or licensed. But since many of those services are available on iOS as well, the issue is even murkier.
you’re wrong about that. It’s the job of the appeals court to throw a case back when they find a problem. They don’t know what a jury will decide in advance any more than anyone else does. But with proper instructions, it’s hoped a jury will better understand how it works, and make a better decision because of it. If they don’t, it’s their fault, because many of these issues are very complex to the point that a jury can’t understand it, and makes mistakes.
the system is fine. Most of the time the jury makes a good decision, even if not everyone agrees. The appeals court doesn’t have to like the decision, but if it’s thrown up to them again, as long as the decision is in accordance with law, then they’ll leave it stand. But if the appeals court finds that their decision is contrary to law, or to precedent, they may overturn it. They can’t keep sending it back.
Of course, being declared a monopoly in one instance could be applied to any entity that has a very high marketshare. Going by that, Google could attempt to have Oracle deemed a monopoly with Java, as it’s the most used programming language, and the largest platform. It wouldn’t help in this case though.
Google pays Apple for the privilege of having Apple keep Google as the default search engine. I’m not sure what that would have to do with this case.
With Java and Android, using Java added immense value to Android. Android would not be as valuable today, if Google didn't use Java from the beginning. There was licensing requirements in place, depending on how Java is to be used and Google knew it but chose to ignore paying for one. One can argue that maybe if Google had started from scratch when developing Android, Android might still be where it is today and therefore Java did not add as much value to Android as some are thinking. But that is just conjecture and not up for consideration when determining damages.
The damages Google should have to pay should be large enough to punish them so that they'll think twice before doing something like this again, as the fine will outweigh the profits. But it should not be so small that Google would have no problem doing this again, as the profit would outweigh the fine.
This remind me of the intermittent windshield wiper patent case where the inventor approached the Big 3 Auto about licensing his invention and the Big 3 Auto refuse to pay for one but used the patent anyways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns