Judge Rejects Oracles Damage Claims Against Google

A federal judge ruled that Oracle’s report estimating damages of $6.1 billion in its lawsuit against Google is too much. Judge William Alsup gave Oracle a chance to change its estimate before the case goes to trial this fall. Aside from the amount of damage, he sided with Oracle on different sides regarding the case.

Oracle claims that Google’s Android mobile operating system was created via patent infringements of Java programming tools that Oracle acquired when it purchased Sun Microsystems last year. This is just one of the lawsuits that have been filed by tech companies over their share of profits from the emerging market for tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices.

Judge Alsup said that Oracle’s expert, Boston University professor Iain Cockburn, overstretched when he used a broad estimate of Android’s value. The judge said that the expert should have used a portion of Android that have been tied to the Java patents to get the estimate of what Google has to pay regarding the case.

The judge added that Oracle might have made the report with the goal of seeing how much it could get from Google. He rebuked both sides for missteps during the hour-long hearing. Both companies didn’t want to talk about issue at the moment.

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Judge Gives Deadline Regarding Google Books

A judge gave Google two more months to come up with a digital library that doesn’t violate any copyright law. Google Books is under fire with complaints of infringement from authors and publishers. Judge Denny Chin of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit set the deadline on September 15, which will be the date for the next hearing.

During that time, the judge wants Google to present a way that would reward book authors and publishers for reprinting parts of the content online. The parties have been trying to work on a deal since 2005.

Judge Chin said that if the matter is not resolved on September 15, then he will take it to himself to find a solution for the issue. He first heard the case in 2009 when he was still a district judge for New York and he kept the case even after he was promoted to the federal appeals court in 2010.

In 2005, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers filed a lawsuit against Google Books and Google eBooks. Then in October 2008, Google said it would pay $125 million to settle the lawsuit. There were several parties who opposed the settlement and argued that the search giant was still violating copyright law.

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