After having about a day to look over Oracle’s patent lawsuit against Google Android regarding Java, the search giant has called the complaint “baseless.” This could mean that Google is gearing up for a legal fight.
A Google spokesperson said:
We are disappointed Oracle has chosen to attack both Google and the open-source Java community with this baseless lawsuit. The open-source Java community goes beyond any one corporation and works every day to make the web a better place. We will strongly defend open-source standards and will continue to work with the industry to develop the Android platform.
In its complaint, Oracle said the Google Android mobile operating system infringes upon multiple intellectual property patents regarding Java. Android is based on Linux but much of its application layers use Java. Oracle is also saying the Android Software Development Kit also infringes upon some of its patents.
Java was once thought to be a write-once, run everywhere language but it never quite lived up to that billing thanks to multiple forking. It’s still quite versatile, though.
Parts of Java were made available under an open source license by Sun and Oracle spent about $5 billion to acquire Sun and its applicable Java patents.
Google doesn’t appear like it will back down soon, which could mean a long, drawn-out legal battle. in general, these types of lawsuits take years and years to resolve and most end up with a settlement and out-of-court licensing agreement.
We have seen an explosion of mobile patent lawsuits over the last few years because technology giants are all trying to carve out their own space in the future of computing.
We hate covering these legal issues but there are legitimate reasons to protect your patents. We just express concern when overly broad patents are granted and defended because it could potentially stifle innovation.
