Google: Oracle Shouldn’t Get Piece of Android

By Administrator On Apr 17, 2012

Oracle is trying to obtain a share of Android by asserting its intellectual property even though it had nothing to do with the development of the Smartphone operating system, an attorney for Google said in court.

Opening statements between Oracle Corp and Google Inc continued on Tuesday at the high-stakes trial in a San Francisco federal courtroom. Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison is also likely to take the stand later Tuesday.

Oracle sued Google in August 2010 over patent and copyright claims for the Java programming language. According to Oracle, Google’s Android operating system tramples on its intellectual property rights to Java, which it acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010.

Google says it does not violate Oracle’s patents and that Oracle cannot copyright certain parts of Java. The trial before U.S. District Judge William Alsup is expected to last at least eight weeks.

Google attorney Robert Van Nest acknowledged on Tuesday that Google executives had once negotiated for a potential partnership with Sun to develop Android.

“When those negotiations failed, Google engineers built Android on their own without any Sun technology whatsoever,” Van Nest said.

On Monday, Oracle attorney Michael Jacobs had said Google took copyrighted Java “blueprints” to harness the creative power of millions of Java software developers, so they then could write applications for Android. However, Google never obtained the proper license, he said, as Reuters stated.

“You can’t just step on someone’s IP because you have a good business reason for it,” Jacobs said.