Andre Yoskowitz
29 Mar 2016 20:58
According to recent court filings, Oracle is now seeking up to $9.3 billion in damages in their long-standing copyright lawsuit against Google over the use of Java in over a billion Android phones and tablets.
Oracle sued Google back in 2010, claiming that Google needs to license parts of Java before using it for Android moving forward. In 2012, a jury split on whether Google's use of Java was protected by fair use laws that allow limited copying of key software.
The new trial begins in May, and the damages figure is up significantly since the first trial, where Oracle was seeking $1 billion. Since then, Google has released six new versions of Android and smartphone sales have exploded. Oracle suggests they would have made $475 million had Google decided to license Java, and the rest of the damages figure includes Oracle's own calculation on how much profit Google made from Android since 2010.
Google claims the 37 APIs they used are only a fraction of a percent of the amount of code used in Android and the profits "attributable to" the alleged infringing code would be negligible.
Source:
PCW