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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

A ruling by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office may have added a small twist to Oracle's battle against Google.

Late yesterday, Oracle told the court that a patent previously rejected by the USPTO was certified last week, allowing it to be used in the database giant's Java patent case against Google, according to Foss Patents' Florian Mueller.

Google sees it differently.

"The USPTO ruling is on the prior art that was submitted at that time, not on the inherent validity of the patent itself," a Google representative said. "It is important to note … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week people wrote in with questions about firmware passwords on new Mac systems not resetting with hardware resets, concerns regarding malware in Time Machine backups, trashed files prompting for admin passwords and then being immediately deleted, and the difference between Java and JavaScript with regard to the recent malware threats for OS X. We welcome alternative approaches and views from readers, so if you have any suggestions, post them in the comments!

Question: Firmware password not resetting on a new Mac system MacFixIt reader … 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

week in review Oracle's Java patent and copyright lawsuit against Google and its Android mobile operating system kicked off this week with some familiar faces taking the witness stand.

Oracle attorney David Boies began his arguments by focusing on a particular presentation on July 25, 2005, listing "Must take license from Sun" as one of the bullet points of the agenda. Google CEO Larry Page, who testified via his video deposition, was essentially questioned about whether this presentation was written and led by Andy Rubin, senior vice president of mobile at Google (aka the father of Android), … 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

Larry Page was well-schooled by his legal team. But despite the training, which is essential for any CEO of a major company, the Google chieftain didn't exude comfort in the courtroom as Oracle's lead lawyer, David Boies, questioned him.

He was at times evasive, recalling the exchanges on complex technology issues of Microsoft co-founder and CEO Bill Gates with the same David Boies in the U.S. vs. Microsoft antitrust trial in 1998. For example, Gates stated he didn't know what Boies meant when he used terms such as "concerned," "ask" and "… Read more