Google Files Detailed Response to Oracle's Patent Claim

Posted 11/11/2010 at 11:50pm | by Pulkit Chandna

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Google on Wednesday filed its response to Oracle’s patent and copyright infringement complaint against it with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Just to bring some of you hitherto-comatose ladies and gentlemen (and even gentler men) up to speed, Oracle is suing Google for “knowingly, directly and repeatedly” infringing its Java-related intellectual property with the Android platform. It filed the suit in August and subsequently filed a much broader complaint in late October, accusing Big G of directly copying some of its Java code.

Now that you are up to speed, let us get back to Google’s response, which is not contrary to what someone of reasonable mental soundness would expect from a company being sued for patent infringement. The internet giant, which had earlier dismissed the suit as “baseless,” has denied pretty much all allegations – of course, except for the harmless ones like the fact that it is a corporation – while citing 20 defenses.

“Google does not infringe any valid and enforceable claim of the Patents-in-Suit, either directly or indirectly, and does not infringe any valid copyright rights of Oracle, either directly or indirectly,” Google wrote in its response.

"Any use in the Android Platform of any protected elements of the works that are the subject of the Asserted Copyrights was made by third parties without the knowledge of Google, and Google is not liable for such use."

The case will go to trial next October if the two parties fail to reach a settlement in the intervening period.