Jury concludes Google didn't infringe Oracle patents

By Michelle Maltais

May 23, 2012 12 AM PT

A district court jury in Northern California cleared Google of infringing patents held by Oracle in six claims brought by the company. But the verdict isn’t the end of the case.

Oracle sued Google in August 2010, alleging Google’s Android phone software infringed patents and copyrights covering Java.

The first part of the trial over Java copyright claims ended in a mixed verdict. Despite the result of that trial, in which Google was found to have infringed only a small segment of Java code, it appears Oracle plans to pursue significant damages.

Wednesday’s jury decision seemed to boil down to a matter of semantics, with questions coming back Tuesday and Wednesday about the interpretation of “simulating execution of the code” within U.S. Patent No. 6,061,520.

“Today’s jury verdict that Android does not infringe Oracle’s patents was a victory not just for Google but the entire Android ecosystem,” a Google spokesman said.

While this case was about patent infringement, the focus overall will shift to the discussion of damages over copyright liability, with Judge William Alsup preparing his decision on whether 37 Java application programming interfaces are copyrighted.

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