Oracle Corp filed a patent and copyright infringement lawsuit against Google over its Android software, citing technology gained from the January acquisition of Sun Microsystems.
“In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property,” Karen Tillman, a spokeswoman for Redwood City, California-based Oracle, said in a statement yesterday. “This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement.”
Sun’s Java technology lets developers write programs that work across different operating systems and on a variety of computers. The software runs on billions of mobile devices, Sun said last year. Google’s Android, a smartphone operating system, powers models from Motorola and Taiwan’s HTC.
“Google is under attack in a lot of different ways,” said Will Stofega, a program manager at Framingham, Massachusetts-based consultant IDC. “It shows the intensity of the fight between everyone trying to control the software.”
Oracle didn’t say whether it would ask a court to halt use of its inventions or was seeking cash compensation. A copy of the complaint wasn’t immediately available.
Andrew Pederson, a spokesman for Mountain View, California-based Google, said the company hasn’t been served, so had no comment.
Most important asset
“Java is the single most important software asset we have ever acquired,” Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said when he first announced the Sun purchase. Oracle will continue to expand the Java business, he said at the time.
Oracle fell 3 per cent to $22.94 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading yesterday. The shares have fallen 6.5 per cent this year. Google, down 21 per cent this year, rose 0.1 per cent to $492.01.
Devices running on Android are more popular among new smartphone users in the US than Apple’s iPhone operating system, with 27 per cent of the market in the second quarter, compared with 23 per cent for Apple, according to Nielsen Co Researcher iSuppli Corp on August 5 projected Android will be in almost a fifth of all smartphones in the world by 2012. It’s used on phones used by service providers including Verizon Wireless, and Sprint Nextel Corp, while the iPhone is available only on AT&T’s network.
Spawning patent suits
The popularity of Android, and the increasing competition in the smartphone market, has prompted other patent-infringement suits over the operating system. Apple has claimed that HTC’s Android-run phones are infringing its patents and is seeking to block imports of the phones into the US.
Microsoft Corp, the world’s biggest software maker and owner of the Windows Mobile operating system, said in April that the Android system may infringe its patents. Microsoft, which signed a licensing agreement with HTC, said at the time it was in talks with other makers of phones that run on Android.
Oracle and Google will probably settle the case by agreeing to license each other’s patents, IDC’s Stofega said. Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt previously worked at Sun. He joined that company in 1983, led its Java development efforts and then was promoted to chief technology officer. Schmidt took the reins at Google in 2001.
