Google Android Didn’t Infringe Oracle’s Patents, Jury Finds

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After a week of deliberation, a San Francisco jury decisively cleared Google’s Android OS of infringing on two of Oracle’s software patents, The Verge reported. The ruling a is a huge win for Google, as Oracle’s claims of patent infringement — which originally covered seven patents before the judge threw out five — could have forced Google to tweak Android and resulted in damages payments.

“Today’s jury verdict that Android does not infringe Oracle’s patents was a victory not just for Google but the entire Android ecosystem,” Google said in a statement provided to Mashable.

Google was earlier found to have committed copyright infringement against Oracle’s Java applicaiton programming interface (API), but Google and Oracle agreed to postpone damages hearings related to those infringement claims, and Google has said it will be pursuing a retrial because the jury was unable to agree on whether Google’s use of the Java patents was covered under “fair use” doctrine. 

The jury portion of the critical software patents trial has come to an end, but now it’s up the judge to decide the last portion of the case, whether the Java API’s “structure, sequence and organization (SSO)” which Google allegedly infringed, was even copyrightable in the first place. Hearings resume Tuesday. So far though, Google seems to have gained the upside in the landmark case.

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