A very grumpy editor’s thoughts on Oracle

“Many electrons have been expended in the discussion of Oracle’s
recently-filed lawsuit against Google alleging patent and copyright
infringements in the Android platform. Your editor is somewhat
reluctant to contribute to the flood; at this point, the amount of
real information which is available is minimal while the amount of
speculation is high. This will be an important case, though; the
world will be watching to see how it turns out. So here are a few
thoughts to add to the pile.

“The patents all cover various aspects of the implementation of
Java-based systems. Some of them seem rather trivial; others are
quite broad. One of them, for example, would appear to cover the
concept of a just-in-time compiler. Those wanting details can see
the complaint itself, which lists the patents in question, and this
page on the End Software Patents wiki for a look at each patent and
the beginning of an attempt to collect prior art. The short
summary, though, is that we’re just dealing with another set of
obnoxious software patents; these are not the silliest ones your
editor has ever seen. The patents used for Apple’s attack on
Android cover much more fundamental concepts.

“The patents may or may not stand up to a determined prior-art
defense, but chances are that it will not come to that. Prior art
is a hard way to go when defending against patents…”

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