Oracle Must Pay Google $1,130,350 in Costs

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120904211545683

by darshan • 14 years ago

135 36 14 years ago

cageface• 14 years ago

I guess we'll never know for sure if Steve Jobs egged on his buddy Larry Ellison to throw this sucker punch at Android but given his apoplectic reaction to Android it sure seems likely.

lazugod• 14 years ago

Why wouldn't we know? Ellison is still alive.

chris_wot2• 14 years ago

And most unlikely to admit he was "egged on" by anyone!

lifeisstillgood3• 14 years ago

I don't believe that's how these things work.

Power player A meets power player B, they discuss what they hope to do in the near future - plans and interests. Perhaps they will have matters of mutual interest - thats great.

Then they seperately take action, happy to know what positions and interests the other players in the game have.

Apple and Oracle were both threatened by Android. No-one needed egging on, no-one needed secret deals. They were open and above board about wanting to screw over Larry and Sergey. :-)

jlgreco• 14 years ago

I never understood why Android's Dalek would be threatening to Oracle.

Tyrannosaurs• 14 years ago

You seriously think that Ellison got where he got by being easily swayed, even by the likes of Jobs?

therealarmen• 14 years ago

Google had asked for $4,030,669, but the judge cut it back, denying the part that was for the work done by the ediscovery vendor. Truthfully, I've never seen a bill of costs that was not cut back, but the bottom line is, Oracle has to pay for bringing this stupid lawsuit about APIs.

mtgx• 14 years ago

It seems very little. I'm sure Google paid many more millions of dollars to their lawyers in this lawsuit.

lifeisstillgood3• 14 years ago

That's not what matters. Getting costs is like a TKO in boxing.

They won, the judge knows they won, but they still had to do the road running and the no sex for a month before the match, so its a sunk cost. Lots of sex after the match does not make up for the month before.

badusername• 14 years ago

What?

ramblerman• 14 years ago

Too many metaphors. I really don't understand what you're saying.

batgaijin• 14 years ago

Also, I'd like to try and point this out again: http://www.scribd.com/doc/103158031/Google-Shill-List

I don't think an article mentioning the google bloggers ever reached >10 points, at least by my googling.

andyjohnson03• 14 years ago

Here is Oracle's corresponding disclosure: http://www.scribd.com/doc/103156565/12-08-17-Oracle-Disclosu...

I appreciate that it probably wasn't yourself who chose to include the term 'shill' in the Google document name, but your referring to 'the Google bloggers' is a bit misleading. To quote from Google's disclosure:

"Neither Google nor its counsel has paid an author, journalist, commentator, or blogger to report or comment on any issues in this case. And neither Google nor its counsel have been involved in any quid pro quo in exchange for coverage or articles about the issues in this case."

Contrast this to Oracle's retaining Florian Mueller as a paid consultant when he was backing their case on his blog.

(Edit: Clarified Oracle/Mueller relationship)

tzs2• 14 years ago

Do you have any evidence that Oracle payed Florian Mueller to promote their case?

wickedchicken• 14 years ago

Does anybody have any non-scribd links?

krichman• 14 years ago

If only compensation to Google for Oracle's frivolous litigation were substantial instead of negligible.

raganwald2• 14 years ago

What I take away from this is that a serious court case costs millions of dollars. Which means is that the current patent system erects a massive moat around the entrenched players with large patent portfolios and the cash to put lawyers to work 24/7/365.

From time to time, some small troll wins a few hundred million from Microsoft or whatever, but the real story here is that if you don't have ten million dollars to buy into the game, you can't play. It's almost as if the odd "win" by a bit player is a PR stunt to convince congress that the current system is an incentive for entrepreneurs and dreamers to invent new things.

But it's all bullshit. It's a rigged game.

Retric2• 14 years ago

It's not that hard to settle out of court and the threat of selling your patent to a patent troll enables you to leverage the threat just as well as the big guys. As to defending yourself, if you don't have the resources to mount a reasonable defense your not worth the cost of a lawsuit.

raganwald2• 14 years ago

Are you speculating or speaking from personal experience?

dredmorbius2• 14 years ago

I really like the suggestion of malandrew yesterday on HN:

This is one of the main reasons I think that all money spent on lawyers should go into an account that both sides get to draw upon equally to pay legal expenses. You simply cannot have a system capable of meting out justice if money can skew "justice" in your favor.

The two questions which immediately come to mind:

1. How to bell the cat (how does one actually get this enacted)?

2. What could possibly go wrong?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4475702

bostonpete• 14 years ago

> 2. What could possibly go wrong?

Easy to imagine how this could be abused. Imagine that I have a brother who's a lawyer. I bring a frivolous lawsuit against Google/Apple/Microsoft/etc. knowing that they'll dump a fair amount of money into the account. My brother bills me for legal services, taking roughly half the money from the account. I lose the lawsuit but my brother and I split the money.

rayiner• 14 years ago

If your case is legitimate, you can hire someone on contingency who only gets paid if you do.

mariuolo• 14 years ago

Pocket change.

meritt• 14 years ago

Just to put this in perspective, Oracle has just over $30B in liquidity.

$1M / $30B = 0.0000333

That's the equivalent of having $300 in your pocket and someone demanding 1 penny.

JoachimSchipper• 14 years ago

True, but a judge awarding damages to your counterparty hurts, even if the amount of money is insignificant.

Oracle Must Pay Google $1,130,350 in Costs

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