SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS
Google and Oracle have both said they will appeal Android related Java
copyright and patent infringement rulings and verdicts issued in May.
While Oracle lost its Java lawsuit against
Google, it won a battle along the way when the firm was found to have
infringed Oracle's Java copyrights when developing its Android
operating system. Google said it will appeal the judge's decision not to set aside the federal jury's copyright verdict or order a new trial.
Oracle on the other hand said it will appeal the jury verdict in favour of Google on the issue of Java patent infringement.
The Inquirer (http://s.tt/1pf5S)
According
to Google's legal team, the jury found that the company infringed
Oracle's copyright on nine lines of code out of millions in the Java
programming language and its associated virtual machine. Google claims
this small number of lines of code is legally insignificant.
While Google was found to have infringed
copyright, Oracle lost the battle on patent infringement, with the jury
finding against it.
In addition, while it couldn't get the jury
to decide on whether Google's actions were permitted under "fair use",
that lack of a verdict was rendered moot when US District Court Judge
William Alsup ruled that the "structure, sequence and organisation" of
the Java programming language API is not subject to copyright
protection.
In the end Oracle was ordered to pay part of
Google's legal bills and didn't get a whiff of the multi-billion dollar
damages it bandied about at the start of the trial.
Both Google and Oracle filed their appeals in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC.
The Inquirer (http://s.tt/1pf5S)
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