OK, this is just weird. “Oracle agrees to ‘zero’ damages in Google lawsuit, eyes appeal” That vast lawsuit that, according to some idiots (including a few of my commenters), was going to destroy Android and sow the earth with salt in its wake? It’s done – but in a bizarre way that makes me question the sanity of Oracle’s lawyers at Boies Schiller.
My regulars will recall that I’ve been saying this lawsuit was doomed since day one, a bad joke. Nor was I just handwaving; happens I’m intimately familiar with the case law in this area, because I’ve been involved in a lawsuit with a similar fact pattern. I expected it to end with a whimper, but…Oracle stipulating to zero damages so they can get on with the appeal?
Ow. My head hurts. What are they thinking they can win on appeal once they’ve conceded that the value of Google’s putative infringement was zero? I suppose it’s possible that they’re trying for an appellate ruling that their APIs are indeed copyrightable so they can use it as a competitive weapon against someone else other than Google, but that’s an extremely unlikely outcome. Alsup’s finding is as near bulletproof as they get – well reasoned, well written, and a very conservative extension of the Altai ruling.
I can’t make any sense of what Oracle is doing. My wife the attorney can’t make any sense of it. And Judge Alsup apparently can’t either – when both parties agreed to an assessment of zero damages, he asked “Is there a catch I need to be aware of?”
I dunno, maybe Boies Schiller is huffing the same glue they were during the SCO lawsuit. It’s either that or they’ve got video of the appellate judge buggering a goat. You choose.