Mobile Apps and Frameworks

After days of deliberating, a San Francisco jury Monday found that Google and its Android operating system infringed the Java copyrights now held by Oracle. However, the jury remained as deadlocked as it was last Friday over the issue of whether Google made so-called "fair use" of the IP. It couldn't come to a unanimous decision on that question. Google denied all the allegations and claimed it developed Android from scratch and that the parts of Java it did use aren't covered by copyright. After the verdict was read Google moved for a mistrial - which would mean a whole new trial and possibly new evidence - while the judge accepted the partial verdict and forged ahead. The partial verdict says Google infringed the sequence, structure and organization of 37 Java APIs by using those APIs in Android. FOSS Patents figures that was the most important decision the jury ... (more)

PowerBuilder Mobile

Are you a PowerBuilder developer and is your organization considering developing Mobile applications? Then your help is needed! Who is going mobile? Discover what PowerBuilder Projects are working on. Did you know that 70 million tablets were sold this year? By 2015, it is predicted tablet sales will surpass PC sales! A lot of PowerBuilder projects are preparing for this evolution ... Are you? Fill this survey, and you will discover: How many PowerBuilder projects are planning to go mobile Which devices and OS they intend to support How many user would typically access these applic... (more)

McNealy & Schwartz Testify for Opposite Sides in Java Trial

Former Sun CEO Scott McNealy, an off-again-on-again buddy of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, testified for Oracle Thursday in its infringement suit against Google and Android. His surprise appearance - in the middle of Google's laying out its copyright defense - was used to scotch testimony given minutes before by his pony-tailed successor at Sun Jonathan Schwartz who testified for Google. (It's just so utterly Sun.) As in all jury trials the decision could come down to personalities. From the industry's point-of-view it's the first - and long-overdue - time McNealy has publicly butt... (more)

Google Demands New Java API Trial

Google, as expected, has put in its papers asking the court to declare a mistrial because the jury only decided it infringed 37 Java APIs in building Android and didn't decide whether that infringement constituted so-called "fair use" of the code. So it wants a whole new trial "as to both infringement and fair use as to Oracle's claim that Google is liable for infringement of its copyright on the structure, sequence, and organization of the 37 API packages." Google claims the two issues - infringement and fair use - are "opposite sides of the same coin" and "indivisible." It's st... (more)

[Update] DOJ Sues Apple, Five Publishers for Antitrust

The Justice Department sued Apple and five prominent book publishers Wednesday morning for colluding to fix the price of iPad-borne e-books. The suit was filed in federal court in Manhattan. Sixteen states have filed separate civil suits so far looking for money. Those charged include Macmillan, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins. Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins immediately agreed to settle and terminate their arrangements with Apple, clear any joint e-book ventures with the government and report any communications with other publishers to the DOJ ... (more)