Oracle Executive Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer, Larry Ellison, delivers a keynote address during the 2014 Oracle Open World conference on September 28, 2014 in San Francisco, California. (Photo : Getty Images/Kimberly White)
Oracle and Google will meet for another round in court this May. Most recent reports have it that the business technology giant is asking Google the largest copyright verdict ever over the alleged software copyright infringement.
The American multinational technology company, Google, was accused of using the Java's APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) without consent and that, they were purportedly using a protected property in order to build its version of the market-leading mobile OS, Android.
The two giant companies already went to trial in 2012, yet the jury was unable to determine whether Google's use of Java was ensured by "fair use," which permits copying under limited circumstances.
Now, the companies will once again fight the case out in a new trial on May 9. A damages report was already filed by Oracle last week in San Francisco's Federal District Court. What is more, Oracle damages expert, James Malackowski, reveals that the business technology giant will ask for a whopping of 9.3 billion in profits related to the use of the APIs, and $475 million in damages from Google, IDG News Service reported.
Google, on the other hand, hired its own damages expert, in which, the assessed damages are close to $100 million only. In a court filing last week, Google apparently blasted Malackwoski's report and asked Alsup to prohibit parts of it from the trial, saying it "ignores the statutory standard for copyright damages and fails to offer anything resembling an expert analysis."
In fact, the jury had found Google infringing only 37 APIs, which compensate for a very small fraction of the company's Android codebase. Apparently, the copyright law says that damages can only be claimed for profits that are inferable from the infringing code.
"Oracle and Malackowski improperly equate the value of the entirety of Android, with the value of the 37 APIs," Google's legal advisor said.
With that in mind, the figure that Oracle is asking for could be reduced before the case gets to trial. To date, both companies declined to give comments about the issue. Nonetheless, Oracle and Google will first meet on April 27 for a pre-trial.
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