Google is infringing on two key sets of Java patents relating to system and memory performance with its Android operating system for smartphones and other mobile devices, Oracle attorney Michael Jacobs told a federal jury Monday in his opening remarks for the second phase of an ongoing intellectual property trial.
Earlier in the day, the jury delivered a mixed verdict on Oracle's claim of copyright infringement by Google. Ending the first phase of the trial, the jury ruled that Google infringed upon the overall copyright structure of Oracle's Java software platform in the creation of Android, but was unable to reach a decision on a key claim by Google regarding what the company called its fair use of 37 Oracle-owned Java APIs.
Google's attorneys immediately asked for a mistrial given the jury's impasse on the fair use question. Judge William Alsup will listen to arguments for a mistrial from Google later this week, and then determine what damages are awarded to Oracle, if any.
Two groups of patents identified as the "104 patents" and the "502 patents" are at issue in the current phase of the trial, Jacobs told the San Francisco courtroom. Both sets of inventions were originally created by Java developers in the 1990s for improving PC software performance but were used without proper licensing by Google in its mobile OS, the Oracle attorney alleged.
Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, the original developer of the Java software platform, in January 2010.
"The two patents in this case are about making phones run fast," Jacobs told the jury. "And if you're like me, you've become impatient about any kind of delay in a computing device. That's the first point, we're impatient. The second point is that phones are just small computers."
"Getting phones to run fast is a challenge," he continued. "Back in the '90s, when Java was being developed, getting computers to run fast was a challenge."
The attorney said that challenges remained when the Android development team was creating its own software platform a decade later. Jacobs claimed that the use of patented Java inventions for translating non-native software languages into Android's native language (the 104 patents) made Android run between 10 and 13 times faster than it would absent that Java code.
The 502 patents describe a way to initialize static memory arrays, Oracle technology that Jacobs claimed Android also used to great effect without proper licensing. Oracle's lawyer showed the jury several communications between Android developers that he claimed showed they knew they were using patented IP without getting proper permission to do so.
He said Android developers may have changed some things around in the Java code they were working with—for instance, using numbers instead of symbols in one instance—but those small changes were immaterial to Oracle's claim that its patents were infringed.
Google was tentatively scheduled to deliver its own opening statement in the patent phase of the case on Monday, but Judge Alsup ended proceedings at the conclusion of Jacobs's remarks after a long and eventful morning in the U.S. courtroom.
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