Because of Android, Google’s Sued by Oracle

The growth boom of Android in the global competition smart phone operating system makes Oracle is also tempted.

As quoted from InformationWeek, Oracle sued Google last week, claiming their operating system production, Android violates some copyrights associated with Java.

Oracle accuses Google of violating seven patents owned by Oracle. “In the development of Android, Google knows directly and repeatedly violated the intellectual property relating to Java which is owned by Oracle. The lawsuit is seeking a proper solution of this offense,” Karen Tillman said ,Oracle spokesperson, was quoted from InfoWorld.

Since Oracle’s acquired of Sun Microsystems valued at U.S. $ 5.6 billion in January, Oracle also took over the rights to various technologies previously developed by Sun, including Java, MySQL, and OpenOffice.

However, Oracle said, Java is one of the most valuable property from the acquisition. Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison said that he wanted to develop more Oracle Java applications for mobile phones and netbooks.

As reported by EconomicTimes, IDC analyst, Al Hilwa, said that Oracle’s Java Micro Edition licenses its technology to several companies, including handset makers, Nokia and Motorola, so the technology provides added value to Oracle.

However, most Java ME licenses are usually only used by lower-class phones, instead of smart phones. Along with the growth of smart phones, Oracle also likes to take part in this segment. Android itself could be one of the most successful consumer devices that use Java.

While Google that is headed by Eric Schmidt (previously had served as Chief Technology Officer of Sun) rejected Oracle’s claims.

“Open-source Java community has stepped so far beyond any companies and working every day to make the web a better place. We will of course maintain our standards and open source will continue to work in this industry to develop the Android platform,” Aaron Zamost said ,spokesman of Google, told to Computerworld.
As quoted from InfoWorld, Gartner analyst, Ken Dulaney, said, when Google developed Android, Google includes a Java-compatible technology called Dalvik, into Android. Dalvik developed as a version of “clean room” of Java.

This means that Google built it from scratch without using the technology and intellectual property owned by Sun. “You can not just take the Java application owned by Sun that has been licensed. You have to compile it again to Dalvik,” Dulaney said.

Dalvik, Dulaney said, is only one of the options to create applications for Android applications. The developers also can use the HTML5 and C language. However, Dalvik is also used in some of the Android applications core, like email.

Dulaney predicted Oracle’s motive to sue Google is the success of Android in the smart phone market. “Now they have the Sun and they want to collect royalties from programming languages,” Dulaney said.