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Comment by astrec | Hacker News Reader

I think it's likely a strategic cross-licensing play, which is to say that Oracle have found they read on one or more patents held by Google and are knocking on the front door with a sledgehammer.

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From what little legal knowledge I have, I think you don't go looking at your own patents that way, because then you are knowingly infringing, which means you would pay more damages.

It's simpler: they just want to shake Google down for some cash.

I saw one interesting idea proposed on another blog: What if Oracle wants a license to BigTable in return for letting the Java patents out?

Then Google lets the court decide instead.

Imagine someone sues you for spilling coffee on them. They are willing to settle if you cut your hand off. You disagree, go to court, and the court awards the plaintiff twenty bucks. Same thing happens in the corporate world, too.

Honestly, Oracle's patents should be easy to find prior art for. Nothing in computer science is new, even if a patent examiner or some dude working 9-5 at Sun say they are.

RIM probably thought there was prior art too.

I've been hearing this one quite a bit as well. It could just come out in the form of a non-monetary settlement, a cross-licensing deal for $0.

BigTable seems overhyped to me. When you read the details on the very scarce reported facts (remember, there's no source anywhere to be seen) things either don't add up or don't look that revolutionary. For example their super-secret compression technologies (Zippy in particular.) Also Jeff Dean's talk last year seems to completely miss work on integer compression in the previous 4 years.

Claims on slides and videos don't cut it for me anymore (I used to be borderline fanboy of Google's tech reports, like so many others.) Stonebraker has a great paper analyzing Google's claims with respect to databases (and it doesn't look so revolutionary.) That's why I'd be surprised if Oracle buys Google's hype just like that.

Wondering what you mean by "license to BigTable".

BigTable is using GFS, so it will not be much use to Oracle without GFS. Also, since Google nicely described some of the major ideas behind BigTable in a paper, there are few Open-Source implementations of it. I expect that like many database systems - getting a license is easier than building and maintaining a stable system :)

Do you mean go looking at other's patents that way, because then you're are wilfully infringing? You're pretty right, but in my experience the flow is more like:

a) "Invent" X.

b) Can we patent it?

c) Opps. We read on someone's patent.

d) Risk assessment: Will any one notice?; EV(X) > cost of future lawsuit?; EV(X) > cost of (cross)licensing? etc. etc

e) Either make X or forget X

f) (Optionally, but for bonus MegaCorp points.) Try to patent X regardless.

Edit: I guess there's a reason the only things I've ever seen in writing from a patent lawyer is a) an invoice, and b) a patent application.

That Oracle chose to go "knocking on the front door with a sledgehammer" implies they want something fairly big.

Could be patents, yes.

Could be a yacht-load of cash.

Could also be software source code, or data center or fiber access, or search data, could be the search technologies and implementation, could be a partnering agreement. Or some combination of these.

Google knows what they want. Or will soon.

Whether additional information leaks out from either camp?

That's also a tactic that is used when they want the other party to comply without going to court. You make it look overwhelming...

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