Re:Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android
by tzs on Thursday August 12, 2010 @09:15PM
(#1599714)
I think you slightly misinterpreted Seldo's point. I think what he's getting at is that Java was made open source by Sun. At the very least I'd say that raises some kind of estoppel defense against any alleged infringement of Sun patents.
Patent owners can't just go around encouraging people to infringe, and then come back later and sue.
Re:Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android
by patrickaljord on Thursday August 12, 2010 @09:16PM
(#1599716)
Sun licensed Java under the GPL which gives access to all of the patents on Java. But Google uses its own Java, not Sun's GPL licensed one, maybe they should have gone with the GPL instead...
Re:Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android
by chmike on Friday August 13, 2010 @01:35AM
(#1600158)
Why didn't they do it ? Is it because of lack of ARM support ?
Re:Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android
by Andys on Friday August 13, 2010 @09:10AM
(#1600794)
It was too bloated, among other things
Re:Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android
by sorbus on Thursday August 12, 2010 @09:15PM
(#1599715)
So if I, as a company, release something as open source (licensing the patents[1] with no royalty to anyone who's interested, as long as they follow the rules in the license), then I, as the same company, can turn around and sue anyone who uses it for infringing those same patents?
[1] I assume that when software covered by patents is released as open source, the patents are also implicitly granted as part of the license, because if they weren't no one would be able to use it for anything because they would be infringing on the patents.
The only situation this can possible make sense in is if Google has somehow violated the license, thereby revoking their permission to use the relevant patents and exposing them to litigation.
Here's some more context:
http://blogs.gartner.com/brian_prentice/2009/08/06/google-op...