The Failed Experiment of Software Patents

[ Thanks to E5Rebel
for this link. ]

“If that sounds harsh, take a read of this document from the
case that turned up recently. It’s Google’s response to an Oracle
expert witness’s estimate of how much the former should be paying
the latter:

“Cockburn opines that Google, if found to infringe, would owe
Oracle between 1.4 and 6.1 billion dollars — a breathtaking figure
that is out of proportion to any meaningful measure of the
intellectual property at issue. Even the low end of
Cockburn’s range is over 10 times the amount
that Sun Microsystems, Inc. made each year for the entirety of its
Java licensing program and 20 times what Sun made for Java-based
mobile licensing. Cockburn’s theory is neatly
tailored to enable Oracle to finance nearly all of its
multi-billion dollar acquisition of Sun, even though the asserted
patents and copyrights accounted for only a fraction of the value
of Sun.

“It does, indeed, sound rather as if Ellison is trying to get
his entire purchase price back in a single swoop.”

Complete Story