04/15, 11:44am
CEO Tim Cook notably missing
Four out of the top five highest-paid executives among Standard & Poor 500 companies belonged to Apple during 2012, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission filings seen by Bloomberg. The people included senior VP of Technologies Bob Mansfield, CFO Peter Oppenheimer, senior VP of Operations Jeff Williams, and general counsel Bruce Sewell. About 80 percent of S&P 500 companies had submitted 2012 data as of April 12. The figures for the Apple execs are based on the total current worth of their possible stock and pay packages, rather than their actual 2012 salaries and bonuses.
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03/04, 4:51pm
Five more vulnerabilities discovered
Oracle has released a new version of Java 7, Update 17. The patch is being released early, Oracle says, to cope with a security hole that is being "actively exploited by attackers to maliciously install the McRat executable onto unsuspecting users’ machines." The vulnerability was made public late last week. It also fixes a second, previously undocumented flaw, believed to be likewise connected to Java SE's 2D component.
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02/18, 2:40pm
Major tech companies wield influence on American government
Google increased the amount it spent on lobbying the US government 90 percent year-over-year in 2012, according to data compiled by Fortune. The company ended up spending $18.22 million, easily beating out any other American technology firm. Microsoft, in fact, came in second place with $8.09 million, despite likewise increasing its spending. Other major tech businesses that funneled more money toward lobbying last year included HP, Facebook, and Amazon.
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02/04, 2:40pm
Move intended to push adoption of IP telephony
In a bid to solidify its networking hardware business, Oracle is intending to purchase equipment manufacturer Acme Packet Inc from Bedford, MA for $2.1 billion. The deal is Oracle's largest acquisition since it purchased Sun Microsystems for $7 billion, and follows a year rife with purchases, all pointing to a greater emphasis on the hardware aspects of its business in the future.
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02/01, 5:06pm
Java resumes working in OS X
Oracle has released Java 7 Update 13. In an announcement, Oracle explains that the update was originally slated to go live February 19th, but that it was pushed out early because of "active exploitation in the wild of one of the vulnerabilities affecting the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in desktop browsers." In all the code fixes 50 security holes; 44 of these are said to have been browser-only.
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01/10, 4:29pm
Vulnerability found in Java 7 Update 10
A previously unknown vulnerability in Java is being used online by hackers, according to security researchers. The 0-day exploit has also reportedly been included in two malware toolkits used by hackers, with the best form of protection currently being to turn off the Java plug-in for all browsers until the hole is patched.
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12/20, 9:32pm
Oracle buys software maker Eloqua
Oracle has agreed to buy software maker Eloqua for $23.50 per share, or about $871 million, it was revealed today. Eloqua's board has reportedly agreed to the purchase price, which is more than twice the value of the company's initial public offering price in August, and 31 percent higher than its closing price yesterday. The deal will give Oracle more of a presence in cloud computing and bring it into fiercer competition with Salesforce and SAP.
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10/04, 7:00pm
Oracle must overcome both 'fair use' and non-patentable API issues
At the end of the day on Wednesday, and months after the surprise close of the trial, Oracle filed with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California a notice of appeal of Judge William Alsup's decision in the Java patent trial with Google. Oracle is contesting the decision based on Judge Alsup's ruling of the Java API being non-patentable.
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09/30, 7:30pm
Nokia could use deal as launching pad for enterprise
Nokia and Oracle have finalized a deal that will see the Finnish smartphone maker providing Oracle's clients with access to Nokia's map data and location services. The Wall Street Journal confirmed the deal with a Nokia representative on Sunday, and it is likely to be announced tomorrow at the OracleWorld conference in San Francisco. For Oracle, the deal represents an easy way to provide its clients with solid mapping data, while Nokia gains a foothold in the enterprise sector as well as a way to demonstrate its technologies to a range of potential customers who might not otherwise have seen them.
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09/04, 5:36pm
No further action to be taken regarding 'astroturfers' in case
US District Court Judge William Alsup has awarded Google $1 million in legal fees in a hearing earlier today -- denying the search engine giant its initial request of $4 million. Additionally, the judge has decided to take "no further action regarding the subject of payments by the litigants to commentators and journalists," referring to his order requiring Oracle and Google to disclose astroturfers on the payroll.
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08/30, 4:36pm
Update 7 addresses hole ahead of planned update
Oracle has issued a patch to address a recently discovered security hole affecting Mac, Windows, and Linux users. The patch represents a rare early fix release, as Oracle was already slated to release a patch in October of this year. The patch is available for download at Java.com.
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08/25, 3:47pm
Search giant does not admit it paid writers to comment on case
While Google continues to claim that it has not paid any writers to directly report or comment on the Oracle versus Google lawsuit, in response to a second judicial order the search engine and advertising giant has provided a list of individuals and groups who have commented on the case and have, possibly coincidentally, received money from the company. The list includes Google lawyer William Patry, Java creator James Gosling, and Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) overseer Ed Black.
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08/20, 2:30pm
Company must disclose paid writers by noon Friday
In the ongoing dispute between Google and Oracle over patents related to Android's use of Java code, US District Court Judge William Alsup last week ordered both parties to disclose any paid journalists, bloggers, pundits or other writers who may be writing opinion pieces with or without fully disclosing their relationship with the companies -- a practice known as "astro-turfing" since it mimics "grassroots" opinion.
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08/14, 5:09pm
Promises JRE downloads from Java.com 'soon'
Oracle has released a collection of new Java updates for OS X. The most important of these is Java SE 7 Update 6, which brings SE 7 to OS X for the first time. Matching an updated Java Runtime Environment is a new Java Development Kit, plus the JavaFX 2.2 rich client platform and JavaFX Scene Builder.
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08/07, 6:50pm
Lists due August 17, intended for appeals court use
In an unusual declaration, Judge William Alsup has ordered both parties in the Google versus Oracle Java patent case to reveal to the court the identities of bloggers, commenters, and pundits on their payrolls. Alsup doesn't state any detailed reasons for the order, but has said in his ruling that information on "whether any treatise, article, commentary or analysis on the issues posed by this case are possibly influenced by financial relationships to the parties or counsel" would be useful on any appeal.
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08/01, 6:49pm
Oracle now required to port previously-agreed software for HP
Santa Clara Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg has ruled on the HP versus Oracle legal battle regarding Oracle's decision to cease support for HP's Itanium servers. Kleinberg ruled that a contract exists between HP and Oracle, and Oracle is required to continue to offer its agreed-upon products on the Itanium server platform. Oracle plans on appealing the decision.
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07/18, 8:20pm
Judge Alsup unlikely to overturn his own rulings
Fresh off a triumph over Oracle in its Java plagiarizing dispute, Google has undertaken a potentially-risky maneuver by filing for a judgement as a matter of law (JMOL) ruling from Judge William Alsup on various unresolved issues from Oracle's copyright claims, and requests a hearing date of August 23. Given Alsup's comprehensive judgement on the matter, the next venue for the appeal is almost certainly the Federal appeals court in Washington, DC. Both Oracle and Google have requested the judge rule on a JMOL motion related to the unceremonious $0 dollar settlement marking the end of the trial.
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07/13, 8:49pm
Federal appeals court likely next venue for Oracle
After multiple defeats in its Android patent-violation lawsuit against Google, Oracle has suffered another -- not entirely unexpected -- setback. Judge William Alsup has denied Oracle's month-old motion for a retrial in his court, forcing Oracle to try and interest a federal appeals court. Oracle, which brought the lawsuit believing it had a clear-cut case of Google stealing code, saw Judge Alsup dismiss the copying as trivial and the jury deadlocked on what if any damages were due. Ultimately, Alsup ruled that Oracle was entitled to nothing and furthermore, was responsible for Google's legal bills.
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07/06, 10:56pm
Over $2.9 million claimed for document production alone
Accompanying documentation filed with Judge William Alsup on Thursday night, Google head lawyer Robert Van Nest argued that Oracle must pay the search engine giant $4 million to cover the costs generated during this year's Java court battle. A public list of itemized expenses was not made available, but the bill included $2.9 million for organization of copied court-necessary documents, $143,341 for transcript services, and $986,978 for compensation of the court-appointed experts. Oracle is expected to contest the fees.
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07/03, 12:58pm
Oracle, UsedSoft case returns to German Federal Court
Selling used software licenses is legal, according to the European Union Court of Justice. In a judgment published today, a preliminary ruling in a case between Oracle and UsedSoft saw the highest court in Europe side with the German reseller, declaring that software developers and distributors cannot step in and prevent license resale after the initial purchase from them.
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06/01, 2:15pm
Firm sues Apple, Amazon, LinkedIn and others on same day
A new lawsuit has been filed against Apple and its iOS Developer Program for patent infringement. Delaware-based Cathas Advanced Technologies believes the iOS Developer Program infringes on two claims of a patent entitled "Web-Based Design Software for Keep-Alive Boards," according to Patently Apple. Cathas expects a “reasonable royalty” along with a payment with interest for "suffered damages."
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05/31, 9:52pm
41-page brief first ruling of its kind
Further announcements have come from Judge William Alsup's courtroom in the Google versus Oracle case today. The judge has decreed programming APIs to be non-copyrightable. The ruling comes in accordance with existing copyright law declaring "a utilitarian and functional set of symbols, each to carry out a pre-assigned function" non-copyrightable under Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act. Alsup's court is the first court, district or appeals, to have specifically addressed the separate matter of API copyrightability, instead of the complete codebase copyrightability issue.
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05/23, 4:10pm
Legal battle centers around copyright issues
A jury at the US District Court of Northern California has determined that Google has not infringed on six claims contained in two Oracle patents. The unanimous decision is viewed as a partial win for the search giant, however the company still faces potential damages in an earlier verdict that focused on copyright violations for a number of Java APIs.
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05/21, 3:45pm
Most pay locked up in stock options
Apple CEO Tim Cook was the highest-paid CEO of 2011, according to a study released by the Hay Group and the Wall Street Journal. Cook's package for the year was valued at $378 million, although most of it is locked up in the form of stock grants issued after he took control from Steve Jobs in August. The first half of the shares will vest in 2016; the remainder will follow in 2021, contingent on Cook staying with Apple.
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05/15, 11:10pm
Phase two of trial complete, damages could start Wednesday
The same California jury that couldn't decide on the "fair use" aspects of the Google versus Oracle is now debating Oracle's patent claims. Oracle began this suit in 2010, claiming that Android infringes on its Java patents. Google says that it has not infringed and furthermore, Oracle can't copyright certain parts of Java, an open source language. Closing arguments were made today in phase two of the three-phase, multi-year trial.
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05/14, 7:50pm
Noser engineers had Oracle install, copied freely
Oracle and Google continued the debate over how to proceed with the ongoing Java patent infringement suit. During the discussion and filing with the Judge William Alsup, Oracle presented a document summarizing why it is entitled to Google's profits from the case -- "super shady" contractors from Noser in Google's Android team. Google disputes the relevance of the filing.
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05/11, 8:15pm
Trial continues, damages phase may start next week
It appears the Google versus Oracle legal skirmish regarding Java patentability is beginning to wind down. At the beginning of today's hearings, Judge William Alsup granted Oracle's request for a judgement as a matter of law (JMOL) in regards to eight files copied directly into Android from Oracle's code base, and awarded an additional copyright infringement to Oracle. The matters of "fair use" and willful violation have yet to be decided.
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05/10, 10:10pm
If needed, Oracle wants retrial limited to 'fair use'
Multiple decisions have been made by Judge William Alsup today in the ongoing Oracle versus Google copyright infringement case. To start the day, the judge told Oracle that by statute, the most it could expect is $150,000 for the nine duplicated lines of rangeCheck. More recently, Oracle filed a brief with the court requesting that any retrial be limited to the one issue the jury couldn't agree on -- "fair use."
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05/09, 7:45pm
Oracle wants judge to rule on 'fair use' as a matter of law
[Update: judge denies Oracle motion, reduces Google liability] As expected, Google has petitioned Judge William Alsop for a mistrial following the jury's refusal to rule on a crucial matter in phase one of its trial versus Oracle. Near-simultaneously, Oracle filed its response to suggest that the judge rule on the "fair use" question that the jury couldn't agree on. Neither Google nor Oracle has responded to its counterpart's filing with the court.
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05/07, 6:00pm
No decision on fair use, trial continues
The jury assigned to the Oracle versus Google lawsuit has returned a partial verdict. On the matter of API copyright infringement, Google has been found to have violated the sequence, structure, and organization of 37 Java API copyrights. However, whether or not the infringement was fair use remains to be decided, as the jury was unable to break through a previously reported impasse on the matter. Judge Alsop is not waiting for motions from either side, and is immediately moving forward with the next phase, the patent phase, of the trial.
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05/06, 5:10pm
Large losses by Android group taken in FY2010
Judge William Alsup unexpectedly read portions from a previously-sealed Googledocument during a Thursday compensation hearing, a part of the company's ongoing legal battle with Oracle. While not disclosing specific figures, Alsup revealed that Google's Android mobile platform lost money in every quarter of 2010. Google does not release financial information about Android.
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05/04, 8:23pm
Judge urges Oracle vs Google jury to reconvene
The jury in the Oracle vs. Google lawsuit has reached a partial verdict on three of four questions that they were required to consider as part of the copyright liability phase of the trial. The foreman said that a minority of the jury felt that more time would be helpful in reaching agreement on all four questions. Judge Alsup pointed out that the jurors did not need to reach a unanimous agreement on the fourth question, but the foreman told the Judge the impasse was on one of the three questions (embedded below) that required full agreement.
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05/03, 10:35pm
20 hours of deliberation, no decision
After 20 hours of deliberations spread over four days, the jury responsible for the Google versus Oracle Java court battle has so far failed to reach a decision. A question posed to Judge William Alsup posed more questions as to the timely resolution of the trial -- a note passed to the judge by the jury asked what would happen if they couldn't reach a unanimous decision.
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05/02, 8:00pm
Dispute centers around Oracle's Itanium support
Less than 24 hours after a judge refused to rule before trial, an Oracle Corp attorney dismissed the possibility of a settlement with Hewlett-Packard out of hand. HP is seeking $4 billion in damages from Oracle's decision to discontinue Itanium support in the product lineup.
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05/02, 1:30pm
Itanium Judge denies HP and Oracle motions
HP and Oracle have both had motions denied in the Itanium support legal dispute. Judge James Kleinberg of Santa Clara County has given the companies until noon today to contest the ruling, which maintains that none of the claims will be rejected in the early stages of the court proceedings.
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04/30, 8:15pm
Microsoft backs CISPA bill to the end
Microsoft in a statement Monday clung to a firm stance on the proposed CISPA bill. The firm told The Hill that, despite having said it wanted to "honor the privacy" of users, it wanted the bill to continue forward. It would "look forward" to working with the Senate on the bill.
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04/30, 2:05pm
Java vet docks Google for tactics with Java
Java pioneer James Gosling has criticized Google for the tactics it used in going without a Java license for Android. He argued that, despite former Sun chief Jonathan Schwartz saying Sun couldn't sue Google, the decision to skip a license still hurt the company. Google "totally slimed" Sun, and even Schwartz was tolerating the action rather than endorsing it.
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04/27, 8:00pm
Now directly supplying JDK and JavaFX for OS X
Following the disruption caused by an unpatched vulnerability in Mac versions of Java SE 6 that played havoc with the Mac community for several weeks until Apple finally posted the patch, Oracle has announced that it will take the lead in supplying both Java SE 7 and its runtime environment to Mac users who need it. For developers, the Java SE 7 Update 4 and its JDK as well as JavaFX 2.1 are both available now for download, marking Oracle's first direct delivery) for Mac OS X.
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04/27, 6:40pm
Oracle and Google wrap up copyright arguments
Oracle and Google both rested their cases in the first of three trial phases for Oracle's lawsuit against Google over Android. The two sides shied away from the larger revelations and accusations, with Google mostly relying on expert testimony from Duke University's Dr. Owen Astrachan that portrayed the Java programming interfaces as basic fundamentals for programming rather than a copyrightable form. While Google could have reordered the structure of its custom code for Android, using a structure like Sun's and making the actual implementation different helped ease developers into the OS while purportedly having "completely different" code.
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04/26, 2:10pm
Former Sun CEO Schwartz supports Google view
Oracle may have run into an obstacle in its lawsuit against Google during testimony by former CEO Jonathan Schwartz. Despite Oracle's own CEO Larry Ellison being unsure if Java was free to use for Android's framework, Schwartz said the programming interfaces were always cleared for free use and weren't proprietary. Sun didn't sue Google over its early Android use as it didn't feel it "had any grounds" to take action, he testified.
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04/25, 11:10pm
Oracle told patent is too late to be used
Oracle saw a significant setback Wednesday after Judge William Alsup ruled (below) that the company couldn't use a revived Java patent against Google. He told the database firm that, as the trial had already started before the patent had been put back into effect, Oracle couldn't use the claim as part of the proceedings. If Oracle had been given permission, it would inherently bias the trial by forcing Google to defend against claims it was told wouldn't be factors.
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04/25, 11:00pm
Search giant makes more money through iOS ads
In testimony that appeared to be crafted specifically to downplay any revenue generated by Android, Google's mobile head Andy Rubin told prosecutors in the ongoing trial with Oracle over Java licensing that the system exists mainly to "make it easier to access Google services" and that he did not expect the OS would contribute significantly to Google's ad revenues. While Google makes around $2.5 billion in mobile ad revenue every year, a substantial portion of that comes from iOS advertising rather than Android ads.
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04/25, 3:30pm
Google had not accounted for touch pre-iPhone
A series of slides during the trial for Oracle's lawsuit against Google has revealed a very different vision to The Verge of how Android was originally to work as well as some of the problems Google has had since. In 2006, the original concept rendering was substantially different from the 2007-era QWERTY prototype as well as the touch phones that would come to dominate Android. With no mention of touchscreens in the initial plans, they suggest that Google hadn't significantly considered a touch interface for Android until the iPhone popularized the concept in 2007.
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04/24, 4:15pm
Eric Schmidt talks Java licensing demands at trial
Google during its own turn at Oracle's lawsuit over Java patents saw its executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt explain why the company hadn't paid for a Java license for Android. During the platform's development, a pre-Oracle Sun had asked for $30 million to $50 million, which Google would have been willing to pay, Schmidt said in testimony. The issue was instead one of control, as Google wanted to determine what Sun techniques were contributed to its source.
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04/23, 6:05pm
Rubin hints Google had few choices on Android
Google's mobile VP Andy Rubin gave testimony on Monday in Oracle's lawsuit that Java was likely copyrighted, raising the possibility Google owed royalties for Android. He wouldn't link the copyrighting to Sun, but he agreed with an Oracle attorney that a 2006 e-mail had said the java.lang app programming language (APIs) "were copyrighted," according to CNET's account of the conversation. Rubin did acknowledge a statement earlier that same day that he didn't think Google could go ahead without permission from Sun.
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04/23, 8:50am
Oracle gets revalidated patent claim
Oracle may get a significant weapon in its ongoing lawsuit against Google over Java use in Android. In an unusual Sunday legal brief caught by Florian Mueller, Oracle told presiding Judge William Alsup that a US patent's rejection, which had lead to a streamlined case, had several of its claims reinstated. The notice didn't constitute a formal notice of action.
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04/19, 6:00pm
Lindholm says Google didn't mean it owed money
Google engineer Tim Lindholm used testimony in Oracle's ongoing lawsuit over Java in Android to deny claims that form a cornerstone of the complaint. He denied that a potentially incriminating 2010 e-mail where he said "we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need" was an acknowledgment that Google knew it had violated Oracle's copyrights and patents. He instead claimed that was "not a license from anybody," not Oracle or anyone else.
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04/18, 3:25pm
Larry Page sees Android as vehicle for ads
Google CEO Larry Page in a second day of testimony at trial made the unusual remark that he was "not sure" if Android was a critical asset for Google. While it was "very important," he emphasized the company's sometimes understated view that Android was ultimately a vehicle for Google services like ads, not an end into itself. The mobile OS was developed partly in response to earlier Java devices, he said: even with 100 phones to try, none of them would use Google's services properly.
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04/17, 8:20pm
Google and Oracle CEOs take stand in trial
Both the CEOs of Google and Oracle testified on Tuesday in the just-started trial for Oracle's lawsuit over Java in Android with statements that may have returned some of the balance to Google. While expected, Google co-founder Larry Page insisted Google "didn't do anything wrong" in using Java. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison had brought the accusations of copying forward in a dinner meeting, but Oracle had never followed through with examples until the lawsuit, possibly because there "wasn't very strong evidence," according to Page.
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04/17, 4:15pm
Apple and Samsung given timeframe to talk deal
Lightly touched-on settlement talks between Apple and Samsung should become formal within the next three months. Judge Lucy Koh late Monday asked both sides to declare their availability for mediated talks within the next 90 days. Both sides on Tuesday agreed to enter into a settlement conference with Magistrate Judge Spero and will make available their respective CEOs, Tim Cook and Choi Gee-sung, as well as their chief counsel.
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