decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
You completely misunderstood | 451 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
You completely misunderstood
Authored by: jbb on Friday, May 04 2012 @ 03:25 AM EDT
I'm trying to find evidence for the definition of the "core Java APIs". Oracle wants this to be a very small set. Google would like it to be large enough to include all 37 contested APIs.

I've provided several high profile examples where peoplebasically say that the core APIs are the ones needed to pass the TCK. IOW the core APIs are the ones needed in order to call an implementation "Java". That set includes the 37 APIs Oracle is claiming Google infringed. It is also very well documented. There are no fuzzy boundaries and no tricky lawyer word-mangling.

If the court accepts this TCK-based definition for "core APIs" then Google should win on the API claims because of Sun's promise that the Java language was free to use (and this freedom includes the core APIs).

My point is what you yourself said:

To have a conforming implementation you need to implement the java core libraries.
So to see what the Java core libraries are we can look at what APIs people were including when they tried to make conforming implementations. I know of 3 open-sources attempts: OpenJDK, GNU Classpath, and Harmony. All three of them say they are implementing the "core Java libraries" and all three of them implemented all the APIs that Google is accused of infringing plus a whole lot more.

In general, the more APIs and libraries that are considered to be part of the core, the better it is for Google. If the court accepts my reasoning then Google has a very good chance of winning on the API claims regardless of what the jury decides.

Oracle's lawyers are going to try very hard to make the set of "core APIs" be as small as possible. ISTM that it might be hard for them to explain why people have to implement non-core APIs in order to call their implementation "Java". I think that is something that even Judge's and juries can understand clearly. In addition, all three open-source groups who were making re-implementations said they were implementing the "core libraries". Therefore this is clearly the definition that was being used by the industry.

---
Our job is to remind ourselves that there are more contexts
than the one we’re in now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )