Here are the patents that Oracle says Google is violating?
The problem? Most of these patents were originally filed by Sun to see how much they can push the limits of what can be patented in response to being sued on similar flimsy basis by another firm (forget who) – successfully I might add.
Judge for yourself. Here are the patents in question:
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United States Patent 6,910,205 June 21, 2005
Interpreting functions utilizing a hybrid of virtual and native machine instructions
(The “Speeding Up Something Slow Makes It Faster” Patent)
United States Patent RE38,104 April 2003
Method and apparatus for resolving data references in generated code
The “Direct is More Direct Than Indirect” Patent (James Gosling’s Patent)
United States Patent 7,426,720 September 2008
System and method for dynamic preloading of classes through memory space cloning of a master runtime system process
The “Memory Access is Faster than Disc Access” Patent
United States Patent 5,966,702 October 12, 1999
Method and apparatus for pre-processing and packaging class files
The “Smells like WinZip” Patent
United States Patent 6,125,447 September 2000
Protection domains to provide security in a computer system
The “Well, it works for Users and Groups” Patent
United States Patent 6,061,520 May 2000
Method and system for performing static initialization
The “Static Side-Step” Pattern
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via Can Andriod Pass the Copyright Test? – TheServerSide.com.
Update: The company that sued Sun in the past that I mentioned above was IBM – weird I forgot it was them. See James Gosling’s (inventor of Java) comments here in this very informative summary of this show down – The Oracle Google Patent Lawsuit Demystified
In particular:
James Gosling mentioned that when he worked for Sun, “IBM sued over a RISC patent that asserted that ‘if you make something simpler, it’ll go faster.’ Seemed like a blindingly obvious notion that shouldn’t have been patentable, but we got sued, and lost.” I can only imagine that seeing this patent of his involved in the fray put a bit of a smile on Gosling’s face.
and
“There was even an unofficial competition to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system.”
-James Gosling
Read the whole article. Good information.