Google sued by Oracle in Java case

June 17, 2011|By Karen Gullo, Bloomberg News

SAN FRANCISCO — Oracle Corp. is seeking billions of dollars in damages in a patent- and copyright-infringement suit against Google Inc., claiming the search-engine company’s Android software uses technology related to the Java programming language, according to a filing in San Francisco federal court.

The amount was disclosed in a filing today by Oracle seeking to block Google from keeping documents in the case that state Oracle’s monetary claims from public view.

Megan Lamb, a Google spokeswoman, didn’t immediately return a voicemail message seeking comment. Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Oracle, declined to comment.

Google, in documents in which Oracle’s damage estimates are redacted, said that Oracle’s damages expert inflated royalty rates that may be owed by Google and that the expert’s testimony should be excluded. US District Judge William Alsup, who is presiding over the case, ordered Google to file the documents in the public record by tomorrow.

Oracle got Java when it bought Sun Microsystems Inc. in January 2010. The company sued Google the following August, seeking a ruling that would ban further use of its intellectual property and force the destruction of all products that violated Java-related copyrights.

Google said in court filings that the patents are invalid and not infringed and that users of the Android platform have a license to any patents in the case.

It also said Oracle made general copyright-infringement claims with nothing to back them up.