Mobile Computing

Oracle announced today that it has filed suit against Google for alleged patent and copyright infringement.

The business software giant headed by Larry Ellison (pictured) said that the suit concerns intellectual property related to the Java programming language, which Oracle purchased through its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. In a press release, Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said, “In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property.”

I’ve embedded a copy of Oracle’s complaint below, which includes more details about the company’s allegations. From the complaint: “Google’s Android competes with Oracle America’s Java as an operating system software platform for cellular telephones and other mobile devices. … Google has been aware of Sun’s patent portfolio, including the patents at issue, since the middle of this decade, since Google hired certain former Sun Java engineers.”

A Google spokesman told me that the company hasn’t been served with the complaint yet, so it can’t comment. There’s a good chance that Oracle raised the issue with Google before filing suit, so it may be worth quoting the boilerplate language in Google’s latest earnings report about how Google is involved in legal claims “from time to time,” but that the company believes “the resolution of our current pending matters will not have a material adverse effect on our business.”

This entry was posted on Friday, August 13th, 2010 at 9:38 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.