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Fresh from losing a critical battle in its fight with Google over Java and Android, Oracle has now been shamed a little more thanks to the judge ordering it to pay Google’s legal fees.
One of the conditions attached to Oracle’s repeated attempts as filing the case was put in place by Judge William Alsup, who demanded Oracle be forced to pay Google’s legal fees if it lost the case, as a sort of advance punishment in case it turned out to be a big waste of the court’s time.
And, with Oracle’s attempt to patent its Java APIs being thrown out, that’s what happened. Google’s legal fees are believed to have run up to around $300,000 as a result of being dragged repeatedly through the courts. [Court agreement via Android Guys -- Thanks, Darrell]
Google and Oracle Enter Round Two of Heavyweight Legal Fight
Oracle's Latest Java Fix Is Still Broken, Better Learn to Live Without
Jury Finds That Google Did Not Infringe Oracle's Patents
They should make this standard in all patent arguments between big companies, it might thin out the patent trolling a bit.
I agree, but I seriously doubt it would. The stakes are usually much higher than this and this amount is peanuts to companies like Apple, Samsung, Google, Oracle, etc
Agreed that the potential gains far outweigh the costs of this, but when you consider that the people taking the risk are answerable to shareholders who might be a bit miffed at you wasting their money on a no-hope case, it might give them pause.
There is a campaign in the US at the moment to force the prosecuting side to pay the same damages to the defendants they are asking for should they lose.
Does seem a bit drastic, but it should remove these fringe cases.
wow.. it might actually end up being profitable taking the frivolous cases to court then
Best news I heard/read today.