Today is a good day for Google who has been battling Oracle in a patent infringement case, claiming that they infringed upon some of Oracle’s patents with Android. For a bit of a backstory, it was in regards to two different patents, one that is a “method and apparatus for resolving data references in generated code” and the other is a “method and system for performing static initialization”.
There were eight different claims across both patents and the jury has made their decision that Google did not infringe upon either patents and will therefore be no talks about damages.
While that’s great news and all, Google isn’t quite done with Oracle. The jury did find that Android did infringe copyrights of 37 Java APIs, though couldn’t reach a decision as to if it was covered under fair use so that’s pretty much stalled at the moment. Also, Google was found to have infringed upon another copyright by the use of nine lines of rangeCheck code and the Judge ruled that they also infringed with the use of eight Java test files in Android.
Those copyright infringements would be minor counts that could face a maximum fine of $150,000 each which, really, is a drop in the bucket. At this time, the Judge has to rule whether the single sign-on of the Java APIs can actually be copyrighted in the first place and if they can be, Google will be fined. This could happen either today or a few days from now as the Judge said he will be taking the next two days off.