Android Legal Issues

Both Android and Android phone manufacturers have been involved in various patent law cases. On August 12, 2010, Oracle sued Google for alleged copyright and patent infringement related to the Java programming language. Oracle originally demanded $6.1 billion in damages. However, this claim was rejected by a United States federal court who asked Oracle to revise its lawsuit. In response, Google filed several defenses, claiming that Android did not infringe Oracle’s patents or copyrights, that Oracle’s patents were invalid, and several other defenses. Oracle stated that Android is based on Apache Harmony, clean room implementation of Java class libraries, and independently developed a virtual machine called Dalvik. In May 2012, a jury in this case found that Google had not infringed on Oracle’s patents, and the judge ruled that the Java API structure used by Google was not copyrighted.

In addition to direct prosecutions against Google, various “proxy wars” were also waged against Android indirectly by targeting Android device manufacturers, with the aim of reducing the chances of these manufacturers adopting the Android platform and increasing the cost of launching Android products into the market. Apple and Microsoft are suing several Android device manufacturers for patent infringement; Apple’s protracted lawsuit against Samsung has become a highly publicized case. In October 2011, Microsoft revealed that it had signed patent licensing agreements with ten mobile phone manufacturers whose products account for 55% of the global Android device market, including Samsung and HTC. The patent infringement case between Samsung and Microsoft ended with an agreement that Samsung would allocate more resources to developing and marketing phones with the Windows Phone operating system from Microsoft.

  • Oracle Corporation is one of the leading companies in developing database management systems, database development software, customer relationship management software, enterprise resource planning and supply chain management software. Oracle Corporation was founded in 1977. The company employed 68,236 workers in 2007. Its headquarters are in Redwood City, California.

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