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Oracle seeks billions of dollars from Google in Java patent lawsuit

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Oracle wants Google to pay damages ‘in the billions of dollars’ for allegedly infringing on eight Oracle patents related to its Java programming language and how it’s used in the Android operating system.

The Redwood, Calif., tech firm made clear it’s seeking the massive sum from Google in a court filing Thursday in a lawsuit Oracle filed last fall.

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In its complaint against Google, Oracle said that Android’s use of Java infringes on Java patents that became property of Oracle when it took over Sun Microsystems in 2009. Sun is the company that created the Java language used by millions of open-source programmers worldwide.

Google’s Android is the world’s most popular mobile operating system, found on numerous phones and tablet computers around the world. Like Java, Android is open-source software.

A spokeswoman for Google said in an email that the billions sought by Oracle was out of line.

‘Oracle’s ‘methodology’ for calculating damages is based on fundamental legal errors and improperly inflates their estimates,’ she said.

Oracle representatives were unavailable to comment further about the Thursday filing.

In August, when Oracle filed its original complaint, Google said the suit was ‘baseless’ and that its stance was that ‘the open-source Java community goes beyond any one corporation.’

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

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