I think he was talking about forks. As you see, when Sun opened it's language, people said at Sun said some interesting stuff:

"But I think there’ll be lots of forks, and I approve. I suspect that basement hackers and university CompSci departments and other unexpected parties will take the Java source, hack groovy improvements into it, compile it, and want to give it to the world. They’ll discover that getting their creation blessed as “Java” requires running the TCK/trademark gauntlet, which isn’t groovy at all. So they’ll think of a clever name for it and publish anyhow."

Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems, 12/11/2006 [ Source: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/11/12/OSS-Java ]

This sound exactly what Google did, so why are they suing now?

From what I understand, whatever license Java is released under allows for the possibility of another party creating a clean room implementation of the language and releasing it on their own, outside of any control, influence, or fees due to Sun.