In court documents filed Dec. 19, Oracle asks for a trial as early as January in its case against Google because Java is losing ground to Android.
According
to court documents filed Dec. 19, Oracle is pushing for a trial as early as
January in its antitrust case against Google, claiming that Java is losing
ground to Google's Android and the faster Oracle can seek relief, the better.
In
a
Dec. 20 post on the filing, Florian Mueller, author of the FOSS Patents
blog, said Oracle and Google filed a joint pretrial statement to U.S. District
Judge William Alsup detailing their request for a trial date, among other
things. Oracle asked for a trial to start as early as January. Google said it
could be ready for a trial as late as July 2012. A trial was initially slated
for the end of October 2011, but the court had a scheduling conflict.
Mueller
says:
"The
most interesting part of Monday's filing is the one that proposes different
trial dates. Oracle asks for the trial to begin as soon as the court-appointed
damages expert has submitted his report. That report is due January 19, 2012.
Pretty much everything else is already in place for a trial. Oracle therefore 'proposes
that this case go to trial on January 20 or 23, 2012.' Google denies that it's
stalling and formally says that it 'also proposes trying this case as early as
possible,' but given the complexity of the case and unspecified 'scheduling
issues for the Court, the parties, and counsel,' it argues that starting in
January must be ruled out entirely and says that it may even be 'difficult to
conduct trial before July 2012.'"
However,
Oracle claims that a trial needs to be held as soon as possible for the company
to avoid further irreparable harm. Google continues to work to delay the case,
asking that the court stay the case pending the result of ongoing patent
re-examinations.
Oracle
argues that not only is the company witnessing a mass migration of device
manufacturers to Android, but that Java developers are turning to Android as
well. Mueller points to this excerpt of Oracle's filing:
"Android's
growth in the mobile device market has been exponential, steadily diminishing
Java's share. For instance, Amazon's newly-released Kindle Fire tablet is based
on Android, while prior versions of the Kindle were Java-based. Android has
been gaining in other areas as well, with Android-based set-top boxes and even
televisions appearing this year. These are markets where Java has traditionally
been strong but is now losing ground to Android. The longer Android is allowed
to continue fragmenting the Java ecosystem, the more serious the harm to Java
becomes, and the more difficult it is to try to unwind. Oracle suffers harm in
the form of lost licensing opportunities for its existing Java platform
products, and the enterprise-wide harm from fragmentation of Java, which reduces
the 'write once, run anywhere' capability that has historically provided Java
such great value."
Yet,
Google argues that in its own marketing, Oracle claims that Java boasts 9
million developers and growing. Oracle acknowledges that Android has increased
the number of Java developers in the world, but Oracle does not benefit from
that because Android is an unlicensed and incompatible form of Java.
The
judge's ruling on the trial date is expected soon.
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