Deadlocked Jury Shifts Momentum from Oracle to Google

From DailyTech: Oracle Corp.'s (ORCL) made a bold gambit when it refused a licensing settlement with Google Inc. (GOOG) in lieu of a trial by jury. That gamble may yet prove an unwise decision. The world's largest smartphone operating system maker (Google) appears to be on the verge of a victory, after a jury was unconvinced that it committed actionable infringement of Oracle's Java intellectual property.

The jury was in agreement that Google's Android infringed on Oracle's patented Java virtual machine, a technology that it acquired from Sun Microsystems in a major $7B USD 2010 acquisition. But the jury today said that an "impasse has been reached" regarding whether Google's infringement was negated by fair use.

The jury' answers aren't altogether perfect for Google. They do find that Google infringed on the general structure of Java and accuse it of lifting a specific algorithm (the rangeCheck method in two *TimSort.java classes/files). But they also absolved it of two other specific infringement accusations and absolve it from the documentation infringement claims.

This is a larger victory when you consider that Google already admitted to infringing the *TimSort.java classes. In other words, any files that Google argued it did not infringe on, the jury generally agreed.

The jurors also ruled that Google has cause to believe based on its interaction with Sun that it would not need a license. But, interestingly, the jurors admonish Google saying that was not sufficient to circumvent obtaining a license.

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