Oracle Sues Google Over Android

[Richard Pieri]

On Aug 15, 2010, at 7:37 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> 
> IMHO, neither company will benefit from a SCO-like scenario.

Oh, yeah.  SCO had everything riding on the SCO v. Novel and SCO v. IBM cases. Pushing back rulings in those cases gave the company more time to demand Unix royalty payments -- the sole source of income for the company.  Drawing out the trials was entirely in SCO's best interest.

Oracle v. Google is a very, very different scenario.  As Jerry noted, the IP is clearly owned by Oracle.  Neither Oracle nor Google have the bulk of their businesses riding on the decision.  Drawing out the litigation gains neither side any benefit.

What makes this case seem totally screwball to me is that Sun openly published the Java specifications.  Sun did so with the explicit intent that third parties could develop their own Java runtimes.  Sun provided a pay-for service by which those third party runtimes would be vetted against Sun's own internal test rig and receive the 100% Pure Java Seal of Approval and use the Java trademarks if they passed.  So, I'm sitting here trying to wrap my brane around the idea that Oracle is trying to annul an openly published specification.

--Rich P.