Oracle has paid Google more in legal fees than it could win in damages | Hacker News Reader

Oracle has paid Google more in legal fees than it could win in damages

news.techeye.net

78 pointsfpgeek20 comments

Perhaps its me being cynical (or ignorant), but I always say that the only real winners of every legal battle are the lawyers.

Yes, layers make money. But the case isn't about just money, it's about protecting rights and setting precedence.

We unfortunately have a system that requires a large monetary allowance to pursue or defend legal matters. But that doesn't mean you should be discouraged from protecting your rights because of it.

Reposting a dead post by FixThisPOS:

The problem is that these are bullshit "rights" to things that are not supposed to be patentable.

A patent does not define "intellectual property", especially today.

Pretty much the only legal battles you hear about are the disasters. 98% of federal cases are resolved without a trial.[1] And my guess is that for every federal case that even gets filed and settled, there are lots of legal disputes that never even reach that point.

So what you're seeing here is the small fraction of a small fraction where both parties were super committed to their position and one party learned they were wrong the hard way. Those ones aren't pretty. But we kind of need them, because they set the precedents that all the other disputes are resolved under. For example, it will be a lot harder to claim that APIs are protected by copyright now, and that will have an impact on all kinds of disputes that never reach a courtroom.

I mean, I pretty much agree with you -- it's totally true that lawsuits are miserable things to be part of, and are often hard to salvage any value from for the parties. Do what you can to avoid them -- work with people you trust, write your contracts explicitly and carefully so everyone's on the same page and everything's in writing, and do your best to settle disputes through mediation, where you can make the pie bigger instead of watching lawyers fight over their slice. But also remember that what those lawyers and judges and juries are doing in the disaster cases is negotiating the boundaries of the society we want to live in. In this case, the boundaries were improved by the process. So it might not be such a bad thing -- other than for Oracle.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawsuit

I think most of the folks overlook one key point - which is the fact that this was free publicity for Oracle. Some would say in a bad way, but that is if you think purely from ability to use/improve open source software(which I agree). However I also feel Oracle was in this not just from that angle but also to show to the world that they are the owners of Java(sort of). When they bought Sun, in essence they did become owners of Java (in a way). But this case has probably done more to broadcast this message that than they could have done using ads. Most of the folks know Oracle as the database company - this case helped broadcast Java linkage of Oracle. As they say, sometimes bad publicity is better than no publicity(you reach audience which you would never reach or need to spend lot of money to get similar results).

That is bad publicity for Java not good publicity for Oracle.

Look at from all those IT mangers/decision makers point of view at big corporations. And there is lot of Java there in those corporations. They previously may not have known that Oracle is linked with Java(in a big way). Now they know.

The kind of IT managers that didn't know that Oracle owned Java are also very likely the kind of IT managers that don't know that Oracle was involved in a lawsuit with Google.

honestly, as a poorly informed IT manager, i'd be more afraid that java costs money to use, and would end up either wasting a lot of time researching licensing information or straight up trying to move away from java

FUD is the only kind of bad publicity.

I had a question along those lines come up recently where I work. Someone had heard a little about the lawsuit and asked if there was a concern that Oracle was suing organizations that used Java. The person I spoke with admitted that they knew almost nothing about the issue, just that Google used Java and got sued; and since we use Java in some cases could it mean that we were open to the possibility of being sued by Oracle.

Although vanishingly unlikely, I don't think this is a bad question. You'd have to be big enough to somehow threaten Oracle. Not many companies fit that bill.

I could be wrong but assuming Oracle won, besides damages wouldn't they have been inline to collect ongoing licensing fees from the Android handset makers?

When you move into the new school/industry, beat up on the largest kid, just to make point and precedent. Problem is that the kid, had support of administrative staff. I bet that Oracle thought through this gambit and saw this as a worth while tactic anyway.

People love to focus on the money aspect, but I'm interested in the content of this damages claim that was apparently accepted by the court. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find anything about the specifics of those claims.

It's not about the money. It's about protecting intellectual property and setting a precedent. One does not always fight a case to gain money. It is also about promoting ideas and values and prevent their degradation. Although in this case Oracle's case is crap.

* assuming it doesn't win on appeal.

This calculus denies any value that may accrue from legal precedent.

I think they are underestimating Larry's abilities.

If Oracle was successful it would have set a precedent that could've resulted in them collecting royalties from other companies. A measly 300K is worth that gamble.

Agreed, though the gamble was more than 300K, I am sure their own legal fees was much bigger than that.

I think #EpicFail fits the description.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com