Judge criticizes Google and Oracle at hearing
reuters.com
reuters.com
"Zero is ridiculous," said Alsup, who rejected Google's argument that its ad sales should not be included in estimating damages from the Android system.
"They're totally wrong on that," Alsup said.
Alsup is the judge.
What would Google have done with Sun's hardware business? Shut it down? Gone into the hardware business themselves?
Groupon is pie in the sky sort of stuff and thus easier to acquire logistically speaking.
This is about the parties disagreeing what damages might apply if Google is found guilty. That is by no means certain, and this article doesn't address that issue at all.
It would be extremely unusual if the amount to come out of this phase of the case was $0, but Google is using that to put an argument for a low figure.
but Google is using that to put an argument for a low figure.
Going with Java and not buying Sun was HUGE mistake on Google's part - major strategic gaffe. You can thank Mark Hurd for the fact that HP did not buy Sun - even then Google would be better off as HP has no history of suing people left and right.
1. The defendant infringes the patent.
2. The damages for said infringement should be $X.
The defendant will put forth three arguments:
1. Plaintiff doesn't even have a valid patent. This is really several arguments, directed at pretty much everything that plaintiff must have done for their patent to be valid and theirs.
2. Defendant does not infringe the patent.
3. IF they did infringe the patent, the plaintiff's damage numbers are nuts and the correct damages would be $Y (which is much smaller than $X).
To make their damage arguments, both sides bring in experts on damages, who write reports which are submitted to the court, and then the experts testify about these reports in front of the jury. Before the trial starts, both sides challenge the qualifications of the other side's damages expert, trying to convince the court he's a quack and the court should throw out his report and make the other side offer a reasonable damage theory. That's about the stage they are at now.
Yeah, this is true. But Google needs to establish their position to the court as being "we don't make any direct revenue off Android".
The whole judge being pissed off is really just theatre. I'm sure the judge expected this, and his anger is more about speeding up the process than anything.
And don't forget the Judge is just as annoyed at Oracle's claims as Google's.
As usual, digging deeper reveals the true story:
The federal judge's middle name is, quite literally, "Haskell":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Haskell_Alsup
The article cleverly hides this so that a layperson can't realize that his true disdain is for these two behemoths because they're not using LFSPs and a particular one, at that.
The fact is that Oracle can make much more money from Sun aquisition than Google ever could. And part of that moneymaking include suing everyone else.
EDIT: I realize IBM is 100 years old and Google is 10.. they're still way ahead in patents-per-year, and the 26k is only active patents.
The only winning move is not to play...
Is it possible that Google's patent assignment policy has affected those numbers "in Google's favor"? [1]
For example, could the policy be that patents are assigned to employees, but employees grant Google a non-revocable perpetual license to use those patents?
(IANAL, etc...)
[1] i.e. Fewer patents assigned to Google = less aggressively patenting.
A less biased report that actually matches what the judge said: http://www.mercurynews.com/weird-news/ci_18525231?nclick_che...
I'm not a member of either crowd. Here's me complaining: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2767018
And I'm not the only one who has a quality site that was adversely affected. There was collateral damage. It would have been practically impossible for there not to be. The only question is the matter of scale.