Not sure why Oracle is getting so much flak for protecting and monetizing their acquired assets. They are doing what Sun had failed to do, which is monetizing the Java platform effectively, thus leading them to sell themselves to Oracle. Granted, software patents can be pretty meaningless and i believe that there should be no software patents at all. But this seems like the only way Java platform can be monetized (through licensing). I kind of wish Sun had the balls to do this kind of thing earlier.