Google and Oracle kick off lawsuit over smartphones
A HIGH-STAKES court case over smartphone technology between Oracle and Google kicked off yesterday, starting a trial that could reveal financial details about the Android operating system.
Oracle sued Google in August 2010 over seven patents and copyright claims for the Java programming language. According to Oracle, Google’s Android operating system tramples on its intellectual property rights to Java, which it acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems.
Google says it does not violate Oracle’s patents and that Oracle cannot copyright certain parts of Java.
The trial before US District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco is expected to last at least eight weeks. Dozens of potential jurors streamed into a packed courtroom yesterday morning.
Before they arrived, Alsup warned both companies that he did not intend to keep sensitive financial information secret.
“This is a public trial,” he said.
Oracle said in a court filing on Sunday that it expected its chief executive officer, Larry Ellison, and Google’s chief executive Larry Page to be among its first witnesses.