I think I'm going to die before this lawsuit wraps up
March 28, 2018 7:54 AM Subscribe
Federal circuit sends Oracle v. Google back for a third trial. As the inimitable Sarah Jeong puts it, "Isn't that nice."
Previously, previouslier.
Previously, previouslier.
It's entirely possible that the Federal Circuit will revisit the case en banc or that the Supreme Court will pick it up this time around. The Supreme Court has taken an unusually high number of IP cases in the past 8 years or so, many of which amount to telling the Federal Circuit "you're doing it wrong" (although often in a way that doesn't do a very good job explaining how, exactly, they should be doing it).
So it'll probably be a while, possibly a year or more, before we even know if the case is, in fact, going back for another trial.
posted by jedicus at 8:11 AM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
So it'll probably be a while, possibly a year or more, before we even know if the case is, in fact, going back for another trial.
posted by jedicus at 8:11 AM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
It's Jarndyce and Jarndyce for Silicon Valley.
posted by Naberius at 8:26 AM on March 28, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by Naberius at 8:26 AM on March 28, 2018 [10 favorites]
I can't tell who I want to lose more.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:42 AM on March 28, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by cjorgensen at 8:42 AM on March 28, 2018 [7 favorites]
As a technical person who has followed this interminable case basically since it started, I nonetheless can't even really start to summarize what the current state of the claim Oracle is making is (since so much has changed over time).
posted by tocts at 8:45 AM on March 28, 2018
posted by tocts at 8:45 AM on March 28, 2018
It's Jarndyce and Jarndyce for Silicon Valley.
Perhaps some day it will reach the level of Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., a case that began with a patent issued in 1972 and a lawsuit filed in 1988 that was not fully resolved until 2008, after over a hundred separate decisions, including two Supreme Court opinions and two Federal Circuit en banc opinions.
posted by jedicus at 8:45 AM on March 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
Perhaps some day it will reach the level of Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., a case that began with a patent issued in 1972 and a lawsuit filed in 1988 that was not fully resolved until 2008, after over a hundred separate decisions, including two Supreme Court opinions and two Federal Circuit en banc opinions.
posted by jedicus at 8:45 AM on March 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
I can't tell who I want to lose more.
Oracle. They're bigger jerks. Also, the precedent would be bad for the world.
posted by suetanvil at 8:52 AM on March 28, 2018 [24 favorites]
Oracle. They're bigger jerks. Also, the precedent would be bad for the world.
posted by suetanvil at 8:52 AM on March 28, 2018 [24 favorites]
Also: I wonder if Google's best strategy right now might be to create an open-source API- and language-compatible drop-in replacement for Oracle, provide enterprise-level support and aggressively push it onto Oracle's customers until Oracle's stock price tanks. At that point, they can just buy Java from them at the fire sale.
posted by suetanvil at 8:56 AM on March 28, 2018
posted by suetanvil at 8:56 AM on March 28, 2018
I'm not quite sure it's still alive - the last action I can find is an appeal filed in 2016, and I've ground my molars on that bone quite enough over the years - but the SCO vs Linux court actions started fifteen years ago (here's Groklaw's timeline).
I have zero idea how this sort of thing lasts this long when one party has no visible source of funding (SCO, or rather Caldera, kicked things off because it didn't have much of a future actually selling stuff), but by god, it refused to die so many times despite being barely breathing at birth.
You can extract rentier money from the Linuxverse if you're clever - Microsoft has long been reputed to have more out of Android than it ever has from its own mobile platform by licensing its patents it asserts (I consider wrongly) to some aspects of Linux, but it knows how to pick its victims and play the 'costs more if you win' game. Plus, it has a big box of toys to construct cross-licensing deals with.
In re Google v Oracle, you want Oracle to lose, and lose big. It is trying to take an open sourced thing that it acquired through acquisition and which saw widespread adoption before that point, and use a novel point of law to assert IP there. If that succeeds, then whole new vistas of shit, loss of freedom, corporate thrombosis of ecosystems, and general misery appear.
Plus, it's Oracle. If you want to know what I think of Oracle, ask anyone who's dealt with them what they think of Oracle.
posted by Devonian at 9:38 AM on March 28, 2018 [21 favorites]
I have zero idea how this sort of thing lasts this long when one party has no visible source of funding (SCO, or rather Caldera, kicked things off because it didn't have much of a future actually selling stuff), but by god, it refused to die so many times despite being barely breathing at birth.
You can extract rentier money from the Linuxverse if you're clever - Microsoft has long been reputed to have more out of Android than it ever has from its own mobile platform by licensing its patents it asserts (I consider wrongly) to some aspects of Linux, but it knows how to pick its victims and play the 'costs more if you win' game. Plus, it has a big box of toys to construct cross-licensing deals with.
In re Google v Oracle, you want Oracle to lose, and lose big. It is trying to take an open sourced thing that it acquired through acquisition and which saw widespread adoption before that point, and use a novel point of law to assert IP there. If that succeeds, then whole new vistas of shit, loss of freedom, corporate thrombosis of ecosystems, and general misery appear.
Plus, it's Oracle. If you want to know what I think of Oracle, ask anyone who's dealt with them what they think of Oracle.
posted by Devonian at 9:38 AM on March 28, 2018 [21 favorites]
The API is the thing that Oracle are suing over, which is why it would be so bad if the suit succeeds.
Android has never used the Sun/Oracle JDK.
posted by schmod at 9:55 AM on March 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
Android has never used the Sun/Oracle JDK.
posted by schmod at 9:55 AM on March 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
I'm not quite sure it's still alive - the last action I can find is an appeal filed in 2016, and I've ground my molars on that bone quite enough over the years - but the SCO vs Linux court actions started fifteen years ago (here's Groklaw's timeline).
That appeal to the 10th Circuit was decided on October 30, 2017, but then there was a request for a rehearing, leading to a revised opinion issued just a couple of months ago, on January 2, 2018. The end result of that was that part of the case has been returned to the district court to shamble onward. According to a status report filed by IBM on February 16th, "The parties agree that the case should be ready for trial within six to eight months of the time the Court rules on the pending motions."
posted by jedicus at 10:17 AM on March 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
That appeal to the 10th Circuit was decided on October 30, 2017, but then there was a request for a rehearing, leading to a revised opinion issued just a couple of months ago, on January 2, 2018. The end result of that was that part of the case has been returned to the district court to shamble onward. According to a status report filed by IBM on February 16th, "The parties agree that the case should be ready for trial within six to eight months of the time the Court rules on the pending motions."
posted by jedicus at 10:17 AM on March 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
I also hope Oracle loses, but Google can eat a shit sandwich for getting to this point in the first place. Their whole model is forgiveness > permission, which, come on.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:05 AM on March 28, 2018
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:05 AM on March 28, 2018
Patently-O has a pretty good writeup from a legal perspective. A one-line takeway from the Federal Circuit opinion: “There is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and function as the original in a competing platform.”
Perhaps some day it will reach the level of Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co.
Plus Oracle v. Google doesn't have issues with fun names like the doctrine of equivalents and prosecution history estoppel.
posted by exogenous at 12:06 PM on March 28, 2018
Perhaps some day it will reach the level of Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co.
Plus Oracle v. Google doesn't have issues with fun names like the doctrine of equivalents and prosecution history estoppel.
posted by exogenous at 12:06 PM on March 28, 2018
“There is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and function as the original in a competing platform.”
I feel like there is nothing fair about copyright, it's hard for me to side with anyone enforcing it on any level. In a not-shitty world, ideas, inventions, and anything psychic which may be freely disseminated and shared and built upon would be.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:12 PM on March 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
I feel like there is nothing fair about copyright, it's hard for me to side with anyone enforcing it on any level. In a not-shitty world, ideas, inventions, and anything psychic which may be freely disseminated and shared and built upon would be.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:12 PM on March 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
I mean, as a matter of principle, one should always be all, "Fuck Oracle and hope they shrivel."
Yes.
Also, I hate what they did to Sun. I liked Sun.
posted by rokusan at 12:25 PM on March 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
Yes.
Also, I hate what they did to Sun. I liked Sun.
posted by rokusan at 12:25 PM on March 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
Is there any reason not to despise Oracle? As an occasional Solaris admin, Oracle DBA, and packager of a Java server app, the best I can say is that not everything they do makes me want them to die in a fire
posted by wotsac at 1:11 PM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by wotsac at 1:11 PM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
Their whole model is forgiveness > permission, which, come on.
In this case, the Java APIs were open-source and widely adopted. I don't see how it would not have been reasonable for anybody with half a grasp of software development to conclude that no permission was required.
There are a lot of things one can criticise Google/Alphabet for, but this isn't one of them.
posted by acb at 3:34 PM on March 28, 2018 [8 favorites]
In this case, the Java APIs were open-source and widely adopted. I don't see how it would not have been reasonable for anybody with half a grasp of software development to conclude that no permission was required.
There are a lot of things one can criticise Google/Alphabet for, but this isn't one of them.
posted by acb at 3:34 PM on March 28, 2018 [8 favorites]
One thing to remember is that if you see an Oracle sales rep coming to your office, you are either going to pay a lot of money or get hit upside the head with a sack of doorknobs
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:14 PM on March 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:14 PM on March 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
Thanks, Jedicus. SCO's adventures in legislative bong use were a part of my life once upon a time, and while I completely enjoy not having to follow that any more, it's nice to know the embers of madness still occasionally flicker.
Is there any reason not to despise Oracle? As an occasional Solaris admin, Oracle DBA, and packager of a Java server app, the best I can say is that not everything they do makes me want them to die in a fire
Solaris and Java came from Sun, which for all its zany antics did not deserve to be bought by Oracle and have its legacy stomped to mush. The database stuff is competent, in part, in that it does enterprise database things in a predictable way, and the Oracle DBAs I've known are no more or less haunted by the technical vicissitudes of their jobs than many others who ride herd on big expensive enterprise systems. But the company roundly abuses its position as 'part of your company's DNA' as any other behaviour-altering retrovirus determined to weaken but not kill its host, and it does so in ways that make others of its ilk seem like the common cold.
I was once at a Federation Against Software Theft event (unusually, because ugh, but like I said, that was part of my life once) about licensing and IP, where Oracle very aggressively defended its policies of convoluted licenses that made it easy to transgress the terms, followed up by pitiless auditing that extracted large sums of extra money (plus ongoing obligations) under duress. Those weren't the terms used during the presentation, but over drinks afterwards I did use them to an Oracle bod, adding 'your legal department is a profit centre, isn't it?'. He agreed to every word, and seemed quite pleased at how well it all panned out.
You do not want to give these people power to charge you for replicating an API, because if they turn that into protected IP just once, they will go out and buy whatever companies they need to have as much of that IP as possible. Everyone else will do the same, for protection as much as for greed, there will be competing IP cross-licensing pools, and every damn computer system on the planet will be filled with skeins of toll roads that isolate things from each other.
This is their dream.
To protect and reward innovation, you understand.
(And this is why I run Linux: revulsion to things I've seen and people I've talked to.)
posted by Devonian at 5:14 PM on March 28, 2018 [8 favorites]
Is there any reason not to despise Oracle? As an occasional Solaris admin, Oracle DBA, and packager of a Java server app, the best I can say is that not everything they do makes me want them to die in a fire
Solaris and Java came from Sun, which for all its zany antics did not deserve to be bought by Oracle and have its legacy stomped to mush. The database stuff is competent, in part, in that it does enterprise database things in a predictable way, and the Oracle DBAs I've known are no more or less haunted by the technical vicissitudes of their jobs than many others who ride herd on big expensive enterprise systems. But the company roundly abuses its position as 'part of your company's DNA' as any other behaviour-altering retrovirus determined to weaken but not kill its host, and it does so in ways that make others of its ilk seem like the common cold.
I was once at a Federation Against Software Theft event (unusually, because ugh, but like I said, that was part of my life once) about licensing and IP, where Oracle very aggressively defended its policies of convoluted licenses that made it easy to transgress the terms, followed up by pitiless auditing that extracted large sums of extra money (plus ongoing obligations) under duress. Those weren't the terms used during the presentation, but over drinks afterwards I did use them to an Oracle bod, adding 'your legal department is a profit centre, isn't it?'. He agreed to every word, and seemed quite pleased at how well it all panned out.
You do not want to give these people power to charge you for replicating an API, because if they turn that into protected IP just once, they will go out and buy whatever companies they need to have as much of that IP as possible. Everyone else will do the same, for protection as much as for greed, there will be competing IP cross-licensing pools, and every damn computer system on the planet will be filled with skeins of toll roads that isolate things from each other.
This is their dream.
To protect and reward innovation, you understand.
(And this is why I run Linux: revulsion to things I've seen and people I've talked to.)
posted by Devonian at 5:14 PM on March 28, 2018 [8 favorites]
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posted by acb at 8:08 AM on March 28, 2018 [5 favorites]