Oracle seeking $12.3bn in lawsuit against Google

Oracle is seeking up to US$9.3 billion ($12.29 billion) in damages as part of a long-running legal battle with Google over the use of Java code in the Android operating system.

Oracle sued Google six years ago alleging that the company copied Java code while creating 37 Android APIs. The first trial ended with jurors split on whether Google’s use of Java was protected by fair use, and the trial is now being reheard in a US federal district court.

Oracle has tabled a report by an expert it hired to calculate how much Google should pay for the alleged infringement.

The damages report argues that Google’s alleged infringement of Java copyrights resulted in Oracle losing revenues from Java ME licensing agreements totalling around $475 billion. In addition, the company faced indeterminate losses from being prevented from launching a new mobile OS.

The remaining damages estimate comes from profits made by Google and attributed by the expert to infringed Java copyrights.

But Google’s lawyers have contested the report on the grounds that it “fails to offer anything resembling an expert analysis”.

In addition, the lawyers have argued that copyright law stipulates that damages can only be claimed for profits that are attributable to the infringement, and that because the 37 APIs only represent a fraction of a percentage of Android code, this should not apply.

Google’s defence revolves around fair use provisions allowing copying of code in limited cases, such as if the copyright work is transformative.

Image courtesy of Peter Kaminski under CC