Google wins patent case against Oracle

If Oracle decides to appeal the patent verdict (very difficult as it is a jury verdict), it will go to the Federal Circuit Court. There, Oracle could argue that the case is so intricately linked with its Copyright claim that the court might decide to hear the case all together. If Oracle decides to appeal both Copyright and Patent verdicts, and the Federal Court decides against hearing the Copyright section, then the patent phase will be heard by the Federal Circuit Court and the Copyright section by the 9th Circuit court.

If Oracle decides to appeal just the Copyright verdict, it will definitely then only be heard by the 9th Circuit Court. This is most likely if J. Alsup rules that the SSO of Java API are not patentable. Appealing the patent verdict will be very difficult for Oracle cause it is a Jury decision so unless Oracle has a problem with one of the Judge's directions to the Jury or as a matter of law, then it's very difficult to appeal.

However this case is appealed, and whichever appeal court hears the case (Federal Circuit court or the 9th Circuit court), if Oracle doesn't like the verdict it can still seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, but the likelihood that the Supreme Court will actually hear the case is very remote. The Supreme Court generally only hears a fraction of the cases that apply to it, and those are generally cases in which different lower courts have come to different verdicts on similar issues. I don't see the Supreme Court hearing.

PS: IANAL

And when people disagreed on the meaning of those contracts, they would...

Oh right, avail themselves of a neutral third party to arbitrate. Who would have to be able to enforce that arbitration.

It doesn't matter what you do, you're going to wind up with judges.

I will address third party judgements.

You suggest completely voluntary contractual agreements. What if the parties disagree?

*Someone* has to be an independent judge, even if it is just those who consider doing business with any of the parties to a disagreement, and people will differ, which is fine. But in practice, few individuals would want to investigate and fully inform themselves of all disagreements by all parties with whom they might consider doing business; they will instead rely on third parties, whether that be a coercive central government or a voluntary distributed system of judgement (whether friends or service bureaus), and then you are right back to people making judgement calls.

And this is all pretty off-topic, but I suppose that too is a judgement call.

You cannot get away from judgement by people. The oceans will evaporate before you get rid of judgement by people.

Laws can be well thought out and well written at the time, yet will fail as the world evolves and can also be incorrectly applied. There is also the law of unintended consequences. Many countries have specialised courts or specialised judges to take care of IPR-related cases, even so an appeal will often show that the law was incorrectly applied. Also the same laws can be applied by the supreme courts in different countries and come to opposite conclusions.

Most of the European countries have acceded to the European Patent Convention (EPC). The European Patent Office (EPO), operating under EPC, runs seminars for Europe's top judges. Even so you still get totally different conclusions. Now the European Union is considering a centralised patent court. Unless something changes dramatically it will only mean you get to throw the dice once in Europe rather than once for each EU member state.