In the waning Java war between Oracle and Google, Oracle has lost another fight.
A federal judge has declined to revisit Oracle's claims that Google infringed on its patents in building the Android mobile operating system.
On Wednesday, Judge William Alsup ruled against Oracle's request that he make a judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) on Oracle's claims of patent infringement -- a move that would have nullified an earlier jury decision and put it in the judge's hands alone.
Oracle's hope had been that the judge would revisit the arguments it had put before the jury and then find in its favor, after the jury sided with Google on all eight counts of patent infringement the week before.
After it bought Sun Microsystems and its Java programming language in January of 2010, Oracle turned around and sued Google the following August, saying Android's Dalvik virtual machine infringed Java's copyrights and patents. To date, the jury has found that Google copied nine lines of Java code, and Judge Alsup ruled that Google lifted several other decompiled files, but Oracle's other claims have so far been unsuccessful.
Oracle lead counsel Mike Jacobs argued that Google hadn't presented any evidence that it held a license to either of the patents in question. For that reason, Jacobs said, Oracle was entitled to the JMOL.
In rejecting Oracle's motion, Judge Alsup said the database company's lawyers were simply asking for "another round of summary judgment based on new slants on the case law."
Alsup acknowledged that an appeals court could overturn him, and Oracle has indicated that it will likely pursue an appeal. "We plan to continue to defend and uphold Java's core write once run anywhere principle and ensure it is protected for the nine million Java developers and the community that depend on Java compatibility," read a statement from Oracle after the patent verdict was read.
However, some in the developer community aren't interested in Oracle's goodwill. Linux creator Linus Torvalds had this to say last Wednesday: "Prediction: instead of Oracle coming out and admitting they were morons about their idiotic suit against Android, they'll come out posturing and talk about how they'll be vindicated, and pay lawyers to take it to the next level of idiocy."
