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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 8, 2012 15:35 UTC (Tue) by amacater (subscriber, #790)In reply to: Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica) by ajross Parent article: Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom (ars technica)
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
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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.
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