Google hits back at Oracle’s lawsuit

Google will put up a fight in response to the patent- and copyright-infringement lawsuit that Oracle filed over the use of Java in the Android mobile phone platform.

Oracle’s lawsuit is a disappointing and “baseless” attack not only against Google but also against the open-source Java community, Google spokesman Aaron Zamost stated on Friday.

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“The open-source Java community goes beyond any one corporation and works every day to make the Web a better place. We will strongly defend open-source standards and will continue to work with the industry to develop the Android platform,” he said.

Google infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property “knowingly, directly, and repeatedly,” Oracle stated on Thursday in a statement about the lawsuit, which it filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Along with its acquisition of Sun Microsystems earlier this year, Oracle also obtained Sun’s Java technology. Oracle is specifically taking issue with the Dalvik Java compatible technology Google developed for Android.

As described in official Android documentation, Dalvik is a virtual machine optimized for mobile devices, and all Android applications run in their own process with their own Dalvik instance.

“Dalvik has been written so that a device can run multiple VMs efficiently. The Dalvik VM executes files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format which is optimized for minimal memory footprint. The VM is register-based and runs classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into the .dex format by the included “dx” tool,” reads an official document about Android for developers. “The Dalvik VM relies on the Linux kernel for underlying functionality such as threading and low-level memory management.”

There had been speculation in the past over a possible legal challenge from Sun over Dalvik, and given Android’s success, it’s no entirely surprising to see Oracle get litigious, IDC analyst Al Hilwa said. However, the fight could seriously harm Android at this point in its development, he added.

“Many expected Sun to raise some hay about Google’s fork of the Java code to produce Dalvik, but having waited for Android to be a success can be quite disruptive,” Hilwa said.

“This is a typical intellectual property value defense lawsuit, but it can have serious consequences on the Android market and its adoption by OEMs. Basically, it states that Oracle wants to get into the action and leverage its acquired Java assets better financially,” Hilwa added.

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Google hits back at Oracle’s lawsuit

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