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Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)Posted May 7, 2012 23:59 UTC (Mon) by ajross (subscriber, #4563)In reply to: Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica) by mikov Parent article: Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom (ars technica)
You're confused about how this works. This isn't a criminal trial. The jury doesn't decide the case, they decide the facts. The question of whether APIs are copyrightable is not a "fact", it's an interpretation, and the judge will decide that.
Think of this as an optimization: getting a finding of facts out of the jury now (i.e. "If I later find that the API is copyrightable, did they infringe?") allows the jury to be dismissed earlier and gets the media out of the courtroom.
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Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica) Posted May 8, 2012 15:35 UTC (Tue) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]
In fact, if you read carefully, this is _exactly_ explained by Groklaw.
Infringement is a matter of fact - so the judge is saying to the jury:
That's a finding of fact by the jury: if Google never infringed, Oracle have no case. If google have a valid defence, Oracle have no case.
This gets the finding of fact, which is all that the jury can do. _When_ this case goes to appeal, they can leave aside the factual questions put to the jury - "Jury nullification" - and concentrate on the issues of law.
Then the judge goes on to establish the law as to whether APIs are actually copyrightable.
Then the judge will go on to decide the patent issue
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica) Posted May 8, 2012 16:52 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
There's a potentially-significant difference of attitude in whether he said "assume that this is copyrightable" or "ignore the issue that this may not be copyrightable" or "don't consider whether this is copyrightable or not". I would guess that any judge would say the third of these to a jury rather than either of the others (least prejudicial), while a paralegal would report it as the first (most logical). But I haven't read transcripts so I don't actually know.
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica) Posted May 10, 2012 14:54 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>You're confused about how this works. This isn't a criminal trial. The jury doesn't decide the case, they decide the facts. The question of whether APIs are copyrightable is not a "fact", it's an interpretation, and the judge will decide that.
Given the question of whether APIs are copyrightable is not the issue, and given that the question of whether Google's usage falls within fair use is also separate, it seems that the only question the jury were asked to consider is 'did any Java code (where 'code' includes headers) go into Dalvik?'
What I'm not seeing is any way the jury could have decided 'no'. This doesn't even seem to be contested; of course the header definitions were copied. What was the point of asking the question in the first place if everyone already agrees on the answer?
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica) Posted May 10, 2012 14:58 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
Thank you! That was exactly what I was wondering.
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica) Posted May 10, 2012 15:31 UTC (Thu) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]
> What was the point of asking the question in the first place if everyone already agrees on the answer?
Because it's a court case, not a debate, and courts have rules. Among them is the requirement that issues of fact (like whether or not infringement occurred) must be decided by a Jury.
You seem to be upset that the question was "unfair". Of course it was: facts aren't fair, they're just facts. No one sane would have found otherwise. But the Jury still had to issue a finding.
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica) Posted May 14, 2012 10:27 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>You seem to be upset that the question was "unfair". Of course it was: facts aren't fair, they're just facts. No one sane would have found otherwise. But the Jury still had to issue a finding.
I think you have me confused for somebody else. I'm not upset at all; I'm just trying to understand the point of this - I wasn't previously aware that facts which are not in dispute still had to be decided by a jury (in this country we wouldn't even have a jury in this case).
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