April 11, 2012 - The jury trial in the patent infringement lawsuit between Oracle Corp. and Google Inc. is set for April 16 and is expected to last eight weeks. The judge in the case, U.S. District Judge William Alsup, warned the attorneys for both parties that it will be the "World Series of IP cases," and that "only one winner comes out of the World Series."
In the Oracle/Google case, Oracle has accused Google of copying parts of the Java programming language in its Android operating system. Oracle acquired the Java patents when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010 for over $7 billion.
The lawsuit was frequently in the news last year, especially when Oracle asked to introduce as evidence a damning e-mail from a Google engineer (see our blog post "e-Dirty Laundry" for more details) and later when the Patent Office rejected 17 out of 21 claims in a patent Oracle claimed Google was infringing.