News · 21 Jan 2011 · MTW Editorial Team
Florian Muller just hit Google’s newly appointed CEO, Larry Page, with a nice welcome present today. After much research he discovered that 43 Android source files contained coded directly copied from Java and 37 of them marked “PROPRIETARY / CONFIDENTIAL” and “DO NOT DISTRIBUTE” by Oracle. In light of these new events the Oracle case against Google seems to have turned into a PR nightmare for the Mountain Vue search giant and I’m sure that OEM are going to be happy about that…not.
– Two months ago I took a close look at Exhibit J to Oracle’s amended complaint, which contained a synopsis of source code shipped by Google and Sun’s original Java code. I have since found six more files in an adjacent directory that show the same pattern of direct copying. All of them were apparently derived with the help of a decompiler tool. Those files form part of Froyo (Android version 2.2) as well as Gingerbread (version 3.0), unlike the file presented by Oracle.
– In addition, I have identified 37 files marked as “PROPRIETARY/CONFIDENTIAL” by Sun and a copyright notice file that says: “DO NOT DISTRIBUTE!” Those files appear to relate to the Mobile Media API of the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit. Unless Google obtained a license to that code (which is unlikely given the content and tone of those warnings), this constitutes another breach.
As you probably already know by now, Microsoft is openly asking Android OEMs to pay them licensing fees for the use of Android so that they don’t get sued (MS claims that Android contains some of their on IP) and that building Windows Phone 7 devices will be cheaper for an OEM in the long run because they won’t be attacked for IP violation etc..unlike Android which has been under attack from Apple,Oracle, Microsoft just in the past year). Samsung and HTC are already paying Microsoft for the use of Android on their devices.
Upadate: ZDnet’s E.Burnette posted a rebuttal here and ArsTechnica too here.
source: FOSS Patents via Engadget
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