{"id":4406,"date":"2012-06-20T16:38:38","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T20:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4406"},"modified":"2014-03-10T15:29:22","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T19:29:22","slug":"the-smartphone-wars-oracle-lawsuits-final-fizzle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4406","title":{"rendered":"The Smartphone Wars: Oracle lawsuit&#8217;s final fizzle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OK, this is just weird.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/s\/article\/9228298\/Oracle_agrees_to_zero_damages_in_Google_lawsuit_eyes_appeal\">&#8220;Oracle agrees to &#8216;zero&#8217; damages in Google lawsuit, eyes appeal&#8221;<\/a>  That vast lawsuit that, according to some idiots (including a few of my commenters), was going to destroy Android and sow the earth with salt in its wake?  It&#8217;s done &#8211; but in a bizarre way that makes me question the sanity of Oracle&#8217;s lawyers at Boies Schiller.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>My regulars will recall that I&#8217;ve been saying this lawsuit was doomed since day one, a bad joke.  Nor was I just handwaving; happens I&#8217;m intimately familiar with the case law in this area, because I&#8217;ve been involved in a lawsuit with a similar fact pattern.  I expected it to end with a whimper, but&#8230;Oracle stipulating to zero damages <em>so they can get on with the appeal<\/em>?  <\/p>\n<p>Ow. My head hurts.  What are they thinking they can win on appeal once they&#8217;ve conceded that the value of Google&#8217;s putative infringement was zero?  I suppose it&#8217;s possible that they&#8217;re trying for an appellate ruling that their APIs are indeed copyrightable so they can use it as a competitive weapon against someone else other than Google, but that&#8217;s an extremely unlikely outcome.  Alsup&#8217;s finding is as near bulletproof as they get &#8211; well reasoned, well written, and a very conservative extension of the <em>Altai<\/em> ruling.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t make any sense of what Oracle is doing.  My wife the attorney can&#8217;t make any sense of it.  And Judge Alsup apparently can&#8217;t either &#8211; when both parties agreed to an assessment of zero damages, he asked &#8220;Is there a catch I need to be aware of?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I dunno, maybe Boies Schiller is huffing the same glue they were during the SCO lawsuit.  It&#8217;s either that or they&#8217;ve got video of the appellate judge buggering a goat. You choose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, this is just weird. &#8220;Oracle agrees to &#8216;zero&#8217; damages in Google lawsuit, eyes appeal&#8221; That vast lawsuit that, according to some idiots (including a few of my commenters), was going to destroy Android and sow the earth with salt in its wake? It&#8217;s done &#8211; but in a bizarre way that makes me question&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4406\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Smartphone Wars: Oracle lawsuit&#8217;s final fizzle<\/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":[9],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-4406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-smartphone-wars","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4406","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=4406"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5379,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4406\/revisions\/5379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}