Oracle seeks billions from Google in lawsuit

Oracle Corp is seeking billions of dollars in damages in a patent- and copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google Inc that claims the search-engine company's Android software uses technology related to the Java programming language, according to court papers. The extent of the claims was disclosed on Thursday in San Francisco federal court by Oracle, as it sought to prevent Google from filing under seal documents in the case stating Oracle's monetary claims. "Oracle's damages claims in this case are in the billions of dollars," the company said in a filing, arguing that its demands "are based on both accepted methodology and a wealth of concrete evidence." "They should not be hidden from public view," Oracle said. Google, in documents in which Oracle's damage estimates are redacted, said an Oracle damages expert's testimony should be excluded because the expert inflated royalty rates that may be owed by Google. Android is a smartphone operating system that Google licenses to mobile-phone makers. "Oracle's ‘methodology' for calculating damages is based on fundamental legal errors and improperly inflates their estimates," the company said. Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Oracle, declined to comment. US District Judge William Alsup, who is presiding over the case, ordered Google to file the documents in the public record by yesterday Oracle got Java when it bought Sun Microsystems Inc in January 2010. The company sued Google the following August seeking a court ruling that would ban further use of its intellectual property and force the destruction of all products that violate Java-related copyrights on the code, documentation and specifications. Oracle's complaint targets Google virtual machine software called Dalvik that is used in running Android applications. From / Gulf News