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Google Files Sizzling Answer to Oracle's Amended Complaint and its Opposition to Motion to Dismiss

By Pamela Jones et al.

Action in the OraGoogle mess, as I like to call that litigation. Google has filed its answer to Oracle's amended complaint and its memorandum opposing Oracle's Motion to Dismiss. And we find out why Google didn't just roll over and pay Oracle for a license. Oracle asked in its motion to dismiss that the counterclaims alleging that Oracle's patents are invalid be dismissed. So Google explains more thoroughly why it believes they are in fact invalid. First, Google asserts:

Each of the Patents-in-Suit is invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because one or more claims are directed to abstract ideas or other non-statutory subject matter.

Did I tell you or did I tell you? There are other reasons, as I'll show you in a minute, why Google thinks the patents should be declared invalid.

Look at this, though. Google also says Oracle's Exhibit J [PDF] attached to its amended complaint, Oracle's side-by-side comparison of Java (J2SE) and "Android versions of PolicyNodeImpl.java" that seemed to establish copying, isn't accurate, in that Oracle "has redacted or deleted from the materials shown in Exhibit J both expressive material and copyright headers that appear in the actual materials, which are significant elements and features of the files in question." Wow and double wow. If that proves true, it reminds me of the 300 lines of code "proof" from SCO in the SCO v. IBM case, when IBM showed the judge at a hearing that Sandeep Gupta's exhibit to a declaration he'd filed for SCO had "juxtaposed" code in such a way as to "give the appearance of similarity when, in fact, no similarity exists."

But there's more. Lots more, including a defense of misuse, alleging that Oracle, and Sun before it, has "impermissibly expand[ed] the scope of the Patents-in-Suit by requiring licensees to license items not covered by Oracle's alleged intellectual property in order to receive a license to Oracle's alleged intellectual property."

Full post as published by Groklaw on November 11, 2010 (boomark / email).