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Oracle's Reply to Google's Answer with Counterclaims

By Pamela Jones et al.

Oracle has now filed its Reply to Google's Answer with Counterclaims to Oracle's Amended Complaint.

And now that I've read all three documents, I think I've finally understood what it's about, at least the big picture. It's an intriguing case. Standard wisdom would indicate that Google would settle, pay up, and move on. From that viewpoint, Google's filing would be mostly positioning for settlement purposes.

But nothing in patent law is normal right now, so if Google is interested in getting these patents tossed overboard in a way that could have broader implications for software patents, they might decide to go all the way with this. After all, they have alleged that each of Oracle's patents is invalid "because one or more claims are directed to abstract ideas or other non-statutory subject matter", and frankly the first thing I noticed with the patents was that they didn't seem to be tied to a specific machine, so depending on how the US Supreme Court defines its terms after Bilski, this case could be the one to get that firmed up. Google has a strong record of winning patent infringement cases, so they know what they are doing.

It's a question that they'll answer based on their analysis of the patents and whether this is the case to fight to the end. Corporations don't think like individuals, of course, so it could go either way.

Since we can't know what they're thinking or planning, we'll assume they plan to fight, so I've done a chart of the counterclaims and Oracle's answer to each of them, which I hope will be helpful in parsing out each side's position with some clarity.

Full post as published by Groklaw on December 02, 2010 (boomark / email).