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Authored by: s65_sean on Tuesday, April 17 2012 @ 03:14 PM EDT |
I believe that Judge Alsup ruled that whether these 37 particular APIs are
protectable by copyright is a matter of fact to be decided at trial after
evidence from both sides has been presented at trial. After that ruling, Oracle
and Google then agreed that that matter should be decided by the judge.
This is sort of like the SCO v. Novell trial, where all of the factual evidence
is being presented in a single trial, but some of the points that are in dispute
will be decided by the judge, and others will be decided by the jury.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: mcinsand on Tuesday, April 17 2012 @ 03:15 PM EDT |
Yeah, for some reason, I expected some more summary judgements. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: jbb on Tuesday, April 17 2012 @ 03:24 PM EDT |
It doesn't make any sense to me either. Maybe both sides *want* the jury to
hear the copyright arguments. For Oracle, it goes to show how Google robbed
them in so many ways. For Google, the ridiculous copyright claims reduce
Oracle's credibility. But I still don't understand why the judge did not
insist that they first figure out the copyrightability issue.
Perhaps the
judge wants the copyrightability arguments all out in open court because he
knows that whichever way it is decided, that issue will be headed towards the
Supreme Court. The more optimistic part of me hopes the judge wants to make sure
Oracle gets every possible chance to make their case before they get shot down
in flames.
---
Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in
— the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: hardmath on Tuesday, April 17 2012 @ 03:26 PM EDT |
The judge will decide by applying the law to facts which are develop in the
first phase of the trial.
There's the
Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test for determining substantial
similarity in applying copyright law. Presumably Judge Alsup feels confident
that he will be able to make this ruling during the second phase of the trial
(or sooner), since the instructions to the jury in determining damages will
hinge on whether mere compatibility at the API level between Android's subset of
Harmony and the "official" Java platform packages can constitute
infringement.
I suspect he will rule sooner than that, and is just waiting
to the end of the first phase to give Oracle a chance to identify something
"expressive" in the identified collection of classes and methods that is worthy
of copyright protection. So far I have not heard a peep about expressiveness,
only about "hard work" being involved.
--- Do the arithmetic or be
doomed to talk nonsense. -- John McCarthy (1927-2011) [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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