• MOST READ

• LATEST NEWS

To nobody's great surprise, the court-ordered settlement talks between Oracle's and Google's respective CEOs last week failed to reach a truce. Instead, Oracle has stepped up its demands, asking for 'double-dip' royalties and a possible $2.3bn in damages.

This is a significant reduction on the figure of $6.1bn circulated during the summer during the earlier stages of Oracle's lawsuit, which alleges that Android infringes IPR and copyrights of Java. Judge William Alsup reprimanded Oracle for failing to substantiate the calculation behind that sum or even the exact patents on which it was based.

Oracle has now returned with a more concrete demand, which includes up to $202m for patent infringement, and as much as $960m for copyright, plus backdated fees. Almost $1.2bn of the total would be speculative damages for 2012, which Google contends is unfair. That would not be a disastrous figure for Google to swallow, but the impact of the suit would be felt more strongly in any royalties imposed on future Android sales, which could affect the cost base for the whole ecosystem. Oracle could charge 'double-dip' fees of about 15-20% per handset, imposing the charge on Google for the OS in addition to the charges it already gets from handset makers. This could be used as a weapon by Microsoft, whose partners only, of course, pay once for WP7.

The trial is due to start on October 31 if no settlement is found first, but Google is under increasing pressure from some investors to find a compromise and further talks may be held, with or without CEOs Larry Ellison and Larry Page. The judge has shown some favor towards Oracle's case, notably when he said Google's infringement of the Java technology was "brazen".

One remedy, suggests PCWorld, would be to drop elements of Java Standard Edition (J2SE) from Android. These have found their way into the OS via the Apache Project's J2SE 'Harmony' release, but Oracle says they infringe elements of its own J2ME code. The magazine says Google could remove J2SE/J2ME code," leaving a naked interface for partners to implement their own build of J2ME. As most Android partners are J2ME licensees, Oracle likely couldn't do anything about this scheme." The big exception would be HTC, which does not license J2ME.

Related Stories

COMMENTS

No comments yet. Be the first to add a comment!

Carrier Broadband Performance: Africa & Middle East
Carriers are using mobile broadband as their weapon of choice in the fight against the commoditization of voice and falling ARPU. This...

Voice over LTE: Market Analysis and Forecasts
VoLTE offer unique advantages in lowering a carrier's voice infrastructure economics and promises to improve voice quality, device...