A Sun Position Paper on Software Patents, 2006
groklaw.net
groklaw.net
How exactly does this effect the current state of the trial? When will Google have an opportunity to show this, and on what context? I thought we were just waiting for the judge to finish making up his mind and give his verdict. Is that correct?
That's not the first time they do this, they deleted Jonathan Schwartz' entire blog in the days that followed the acquisition.
They were certainly right to think that this blog would hurt their case, but they obviously didn't realize that Schwartz' testimony itself would align with Google.
Fun times.
Probably not much, since I don't think there's something like "fair use" of patents. Either you infringe, or you don't.
> I thought we were just waiting for the judge to finish making up his mind and give his verdict. Is that correct?
Well, the trial is three phases: copyright, patents and damages. The jury is now deliberating on phase 2, patents. If they find that Google infringed one or both of the patents in question, there will be a phase 3 that assess the damage. I don't know if this position paper has any place in phase 3, but at least it's a possibility.
So Sun's position would be that software patents would be acceptable in this case because Android is not interoperable with Java not trying to be.
That said, it's not quite as cut and dry, given that API compatibility goes a long way.