GOOG engineer admits to "strong indication that it is likely" he copied Sun code
fosspatents.blogspot.com
fosspatents.blogspot.com
The Google "engineer" used work at Sun and is currently Google's Chief Java Architect.
"Q. BY MR. JACOBS: Do you have a recollection of accessing Sun code while you were working on TimSort?
A. I don't have a recollection, but I'm perfectly willing to believe that I did. You know, I think the similarity of the signature, the fact that, you know, the three arguments are in the same order and have the same name, you know, is a strong indication that it is likely that I did."
It is very easy to skew a picture one way or the other by cherry picking a pile of paper and mr. Mueller has a long enough history that I'd be wary of anything he produces.
Ok, damages: $500 should do it, and that's probably an overestimation. If there is wholesale copyright infringement I'm sure we'll get to it but this particular instance is hardly reason for a general alert.
if you consider this admission together with the other evidence against Google, it's pretty damning.
an October 2005 email written by Andy Rubin, Google’s senior VP of mobile, concerning Sun, which held the patents at issue here before being acquired by Oracle. “If Sun doesn’t want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language – or – 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way.”
The second, this email from Google engineer Tim Lindholm (who was previously a senior Java engineer at Sun) to Rubin in August of 2010: “What we’ve actually been asked to do (by Larry and Sergey) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome. We’ve been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need.”
even the Judge agrees.
As Alsup told Oracle’s attorneys moments after reading it in open court, “That’s a pretty good document for you. That ought to be … big for you at the trial.” Indeed — particularly if Rubin has to explain it on the stand. “You know what they used to say about Joe Alioto,” Alsup said, referring to the successful antitrust attorney. “In a big case like this, he only needed two documents: He needed a document like this, the one I just read, and the Magna Carta. And he won every case. And you are going to be on the losing end of this document with Andy Rubin on the stand. … If willful infringement is found, there are profound implications for a permanent injunction. So you better think about that.”
http://allthingsd.com/20110727/old-email-may-bite-google-in-...