{"id":4358,"date":"2012-05-31T19:07:46","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T23:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4358"},"modified":"2014-03-10T16:23:47","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T20:23:47","slug":"oracle-becomes-sco-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4358","title":{"rendered":"Oracle becomes SCO redux"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To the surprise of nobody who was actually familiar with the underlying law and precedent, the judge in the Oracle-vs.-Google mega-lawsuit ruled today that Oracle&#8217;s claim of copyright protection on the Java APIs <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2012\/5\/31\/3055620\/oracle-java-api-not-covered-copyright-law\">is contrary to law<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This means Oracle&#8217;s claims against Google are toast. Their best case is now that they&#8217;ll get $300K in statutory damages for two technical copyright violations, almost noise compared to what Oracle spent in legal fees.  The patent claims went just as thoroughly nowhere as I predicted back when the lawsuit was launched.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In a previous post I speculated that this lawsuit might signal the beginning of the end of the patent wars, as business managers wake up to the fact that IP litigation is usually a spectacularly expensive way to accomplish nothing. Today&#8217;s ruling, though it&#8217;s about copyrights, increases these odds.  Here, as in the SCO lawsuit, copyright issues were pushed harder as what was initially a patent case failed.<\/p>\n<p>My headline is admittedly a bit of an exaggeration; unlike SCO, Oracle still has a viable business to run.  But the history and outcome of this lawsuit &#8211; huge stakes, shifting claims, apocalyptic press coverage all leading to a spectacular and humiliating debacle &#8211; certainly recalls the SCO lawsuit.  It seems unlikely that many more of these will be required before corporate America gets the lesson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To the surprise of nobody who was actually familiar with the underlying law and precedent, the judge in the Oracle-vs.-Google mega-lawsuit ruled today that Oracle&#8217;s claim of copyright protection on the Java APIs is contrary to law. This means Oracle&#8217;s claims against Google are toast. Their best case is now that they&#8217;ll get $300K in&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4358\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Oracle becomes SCO redux<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-4358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software","tag-open-source","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4358"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5388,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358\/revisions\/5388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}