In closing arguments on Monday, a Google attorney said that Oracle Corp have filed a multibillion-dollar copyright lawsuit against Google because they have failed in their own attempts to enter the smart phone market. On the other hand we find that the Oracle attorney hase accused Google of taking its intellectual property without prior permission and in the process have made huge profits.
At the US District Court in San Francisco, in a retrial we find that, Oracle Corp has claimed Google’s Android smart phone operating system have violated their copyright on parts of Java which is a development platform. In reply to this we find Alphabet Inc’s Google unit saying that they should be able to use Java without paying a fee as it comes under the fair-use provision of copyright law.
In the 2012 trial , the jury could not take any decision saying it is a situation in which no advancement is possible. But in the current trial if the jury rules that Google’s claim of fair use is wrong then it means that Google will have to pay Oracle an amount of nearly $9 billion in damages. This case is of great interest to all software developers, as if Oracle wins the case then more software copyright lawsuits may emerge. On Monday, in the court Robert Van Nest, Google’s attorney played a video where we could hear the speech of the Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison praising Google for building devices that use Java. Later in the same speech Ellison suggested that Oracle should also build similar hardware. Then Robert Van Nest said that Oracle failed to build a smart phone of their own, so they decided to accuse Google of unfair copying. He also said that they now want all the credit and a whole lot of money. That’s not fair.
