Oracle wins advantage in Java patent dispute with Google

According to reports in US media, Oracle now has an advantage in proceedings concerning patent and copyright violations in Google's Android mobile operating system. US District Judge William Alsup sided with Oracle in four out of five cases concerning the descriptions of certain technical terms. For one additional term, the judge provided his own interpretation. This addressed terms in three of the seven patents that are under dispute in claim construction, which means that technical terms, also referred to as jargon, and their semantic interpretations are clarified to demarcate patent rights for further proceedings.

When it took over Sun around a year ago, Oracle took possession of the rights to the Java programming language – and sued Google last August for allegedly violating patents and copyrights from Java code in Android's Dalvik virtual machine. At the end of October last year, Oracle updated its lawsuit against Google, adding sample code to the complaint to show where Google allegedly copied code line for line. The company claimed that nearly a third of Android APIs are derived from Oracle's Java APIs.

Google and Oracle have until 6 May to critique Alsup's preliminary decision; the judge took a seminar on Java at the beginning of April. Proceedings are expected to begin in November 2011.

(crve)