New evidence shows Google may have directly copied Oracle IP in Android

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Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac“Google faces a steep challenge in its defense against Oracle’s lawsuit over seven Java patents and some copyrighted material,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “More than five months after Oracle’s complaint, Google appears unable to countersue Oracle over patent infringement, while evidence is mounting that different components of the Android mobile operating system may indeed violate copyrights of Sun Microsystems, a company Oracle acquired a year ago.”

Mueller reports, “I have discovered additional material that Oracle might present to the court as examples of copyright-infringing material in the Android codebase:”

• 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 2.3), 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.

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Meanwhile, let’s enjoy a short 30-second bit of video:

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “sparkplug” for the heads up.]

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