Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2013/02_-_February/Microsoft_sides_with_Oracle_against_Google_in_Java_appeal/

by snydeq • 13 years ago

64 55 13 years ago

newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com

kirarev• 13 years ago

kind of ridiculous that this even makes to court in the first place....

edit: Does anyone know much about the precedence (in court rulings) of ownership of programming languages?

lostnet• 13 years ago

I think you would have to separate out the different aspects of implementation, syntax and publicity into things that could be patented, copyrighted or trademarked.

You could look at Loglan vs Logban for strongly related issues on what you can and can not copyright in language in general.

magicalist• 13 years ago

This article is trying to make hay out of various tech wars because it makes a nice narrative, but the key here is

A copy of Microsoft's legal brief was not immediately available on the Federal Circuit's docket.

All we know is that they filed a friend of the court brief. Oracle's appeal has a fairly diverse[1] spread of approaches to copyright and APIs in an attempt to make their case. Microsoft's brief could be equally sprawling or limited to a single aspect of Oracle's claims. We won't know until we can actually read it.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/on-appeal-oracle-...

callumjones• 13 years ago

Does Microsoft actually have a vested interest specifically in the use of Java by Google, such as being upset that Google had free use of the Java APIs while itself was scolded for implementing their own JVM?

Or is it basically "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"?

OGinparadise5• 13 years ago

Guessing only: MS is a software company so they'd want to make it harder for others to copy (like whatever Google supposedly copied from java.)

This, of course, is business for all involved, nothing personal.

stanleydrew3• 13 years ago

But that's a little strange, since Google is also a software company.

azakai• 13 years ago

> Guessing only: MS is a software company so they'd want to make it harder for others to copy (like whatever Google supposedly copied from java.)

The guess can be a little more specific: Microsoft saw what the verdict said about Java and was concerned for what it meant for C#. Oracle having less control over Java because languages are not copyrightable means Microsoft has less control over C#.

C# is important to Microsoft, so it's going to make an effort to maintain full control over it.

Which would be bad for all of us should Oracle and Microsoft prevail. Java and C# are widely-used, and the kind of control Oracle and Microsoft want over them is excessive.

zmmmmm2• 13 years ago

Microsoft's interest lately is to conduct a kind psyops campaign against Google. They seem to have identified that a huge problem for them is that people really like Google a lot. So basically their strategy is to throw mud at Google until people don't trust them or like them any more. So I would say this fits into their campaign very neatly - if they can portray Google as stealing technology from other companies then they can keep piecing together this picture of "bad Google" that they want everyone to see.

kvb2• 13 years ago

I doubt that their amicus briefs are driven by PR considerations as opposed to actual business concerns. How does a court filing that most of the public will never see help them shift public perceptions of Google?

rza• 13 years ago

If this is their plan, I think it's a terrible one. All they're really doing is reinforcing their image as a patent troll. This will only strengthen Google's position as the "good guy" as it is very easy to simply see this case as freedom and innovation vs. corporate greed.

lucian1900• 13 years ago

They likely want APIs to be copywritable.

jebblue• 13 years ago

Considering where .Net and C# came from (as in heavily, heavily, heavily influenced by) and we have to forget those pictures of Bill Gates chumming around with then President Clinton riding around in golf carts; it seems clear why Microsoft would take the stance they did..."Android is the best-selling smartphone operating system around the world.".

camus• 13 years ago

I guess they dont understand why they lost in court with Sun and why Google did not with Oracle. And an android legal "takedown" would be very beneficial to MSFT ,since they try to sell phoneOS too.

slurry• 13 years ago

Microsoft had licensed Java code under a trade agreement and was found to have violated the terms of that trade agreement.

Google had not licensed Java code, and was sued under patent law. Totally different kind of case.

caf• 13 years ago

Oracle made both patent and copyright claims against Google. The patent claims were pretty bog-standard, but the copyright claim (the loss of which is what Oracle is appealing) was quite... novel.

mtgx• 13 years ago

I find it pretty sad that Microsoft are lowering themselves to trying to kill competition through lawsuits, lobbying for anti-trust, and paying for hate and FUD campaigns against them lately. On the other hand all this stuff is not exactly strange to Microsoft. Just continuing the legacy.

tsotha• 13 years ago

Microsoft was on the receiving end of a lot of these kinds of campaigns as well, so you can hardly blame them.

z3phyr• 13 years ago

If anytime I have to use a 'managed' language, I go for python and haskell. Though, most of the time, I work on my video game renderer engine in evergreen C/C++ , I am quite satisfied and productive :)

There is no use of C#, Java or VB for my work, and for good reasons ;)

berlinbrown• 13 years ago

So you as the sole developer have decided that python and haskell are good for you.

Well I am convinced.

Sure, you aren't dealing with 30 year old databases. Or 100s of developers with millions of code. But that shouldn't matter.

Locke1689• 13 years ago

The original post was off-topic and useless. There's no need to draw the entire conversation off-topic.

Egregore• 13 years ago

As a good in my opinion (but unfortunatelly improbable) move from Google, will be to switch from Java to Haxe in next versions, because it compiles both to native Android and to Java and looks similar to Java, on the first view.

Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

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