oracle-google

SAN FRANCISCO -- Android chief Andy Rubin wrapped up his testimony this morning in the copyright portion of the Oracle-Google trial at the U.S. District Court here.

Google counsel Robert Van Nest picked up from where he left off on Tuesday afternoon, asking Rubin what happened after initial negotiations with Sun Microsystems ended in 2006. Rubin said that the Android team went forward to build the mobile operating system on its own.

"We wrote code ourselves, obviously," said Rubin. "In developing Android, we assembled it from various pieces."

Although it is constantly evolving, Rubin commented … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- After a brief encounter yesterday afternoon here at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Oracle's lead attorney David Boies continued his carefully crafted interrogation of Google's Android chief Andy Rubin.

Boies placed about 40 documents in evidence to lay an intricate trail that he hopes will give the jury the impression that Rubin and Google knew that the company needed to license Java intellectual property.

To recap Monday's testimony, Boies walked Rubin through e-mails and documents from 2005 and 2006 to establish that early on in Android development, Google acknowledged the … Read more

Last updated: 9:30 PM PT 

As the second week of the Oracle-Google trial got underway Monday, Andy Rubin, the man behind the Android platform, took his turn on the witness stand. Oracle's lead lawyer, David Boies, quickly got to his main point in taking Rubin through a series of emails from 2005 and 2006. 

He established that Rubin knew that he didn't need a license for the Java programming language, but that the emails made clear during that period of Android's development he thought Google would need a partnership with Sun or a TCK … Read more

As the second week of the Oracle-Google trial got underway Monday, Judge William Alsup continued to probe the depths of Java and Android APIs and copyright law. Prior to the jury entering the courtroom, Alsup asked the Google team whether Google admitted that it copied the 37 APIs at the center of the lawsuit.

"I quibble with the word "copy," Google lawyer Bruce Baber said. "APIs have been out for long time, in books, on the web and available in (Apache) Harmony. We absolutely used and included them in Android so we would have them exactly … Read more

The Oracle v. Google trial continued on day five with more detailed dissection of Java and APIs and the difference, or similarities, between Android and Java. 

Google's lawyers framed their questions to elicit responses to make the case that the Java language is free and open, and the 37 applications programming interfaces that Oracle contends Google violated are not subject to copyright. Oracle's lawyers relentlessly pursued the line that Google knowingly ripped off restricted elements of Java to create Android.

In today's testimony, Google's attempts to license Java from Sun over several years was discussed. … Read more

Sun Microsystems' years-long effort to profit from Java has come to this: the chief executives of two of tech's most powerful companies, Oracle and Google, being grilled in court.

Scrapping over copyrights, patents, and licensing deals is an ignominious outcome for a technology that a decade and a half ago spooked Microsoft and seemed poised to inject dynamism into a largely static Web. Back when it debuted, Java was a brand that carried impressive power.

Though Java has been technologically influential, its brand clout with the average person has diminished as other software such as Apple's iOS and … Read more

David Boies, Oracle's lead lawyer in the Silicon Valley trial of titans, had a nice set-up for day four of the proceedings. On day three, Wednesday, Boies probed Google CEO Larry Page about his familiarity with Tim Lindholm, a software engineer working on the Android team who was involved in determining whether Google should acquire a license for Java.

Boies asked Page about a 2005 document stating, "Google/Android, with support from Tim Lindholm, negotiates the first OSS J2ME JVM license with Sun."  Lindholm had just joined Google from Sun.  

Boies asked Page … Read more

Last updated: 11:50 a.m. PT 

The scene of the Oracle-Google trial today was more like a computer science classroom than a courtroom as the witnesses explained the inner workings of Java and APIs.

Mark Reinhold, Oracle Java Platform Group chief architect, gave a tutorial on Java as part of his testimony. He spent nearly 14 years at Sun as principal engineer for Java SE & OpenJDK before Oracle acquired Sun.

The questioning mostly focused on the 37 Java APIs at the center of the lawsuit. Reinhold, dressed in a dark jacket and red tie as Oracle CEO … Read more

Last updated: 10 a.m. PT

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google CEO Larry Page returned to court on Wednesday morning to retake the stand as a witness in the legal battle between Google and Oracle over patents and copyrights related to Java.

Yet, as demonstrated during Page's initial testimony on the stand on Tuesday afternoon as well as during the video of his deposition from last August, Page continuously denied much -- if any -- knowledge regarding discussions regarding Java licenses and Google engineers copying Java API codes.

See also: Google's Page claims little knowledge about Android, Java license … Read more