After just two short weeks the first phase of the Google VS Oracle lawsuit has come to an end, with closing arguments on both sides. The jury of seven women and five men have now begun deliberations, which the Judge has warned both parties could take up to a week. Oracle stands by their arguments that Google is making excuses not to pay them while Google holds that there was no copying in their use of Java. Judge William Alsup defined for the jury, once again, the boundaries of the case in preparation for deliberations. He said that "copyright protects the expression of ideas, but not procedures systems, methods or operation, concepts, principles or discoveries. For the purpose of this case, Oracle's copyrights cover the structure, sequence, and organization of the actual software code that underpins the Java platform."

Mike Jacobs, Oracle's lawyer, closed with the question, "Can somebody use another company's property just because it suits them?"

This rhetorical question was thrown out in order to sway the jury toward Oracle's belief that Google's use of a custom Java platform on top of Android violates Oracle's copyrights. Google's lawyer, Robert Van Nest, on the other hand claims "fair use" of Java copyrights, reiterating that "everything in Android is original." All of this, again, in regard to 37 APIs that are at the heart of this phase of the trial. Google wants the jury to believe that Android is not a copy of Java, but instead a "substantially different work, with different success in the market."


Van Nest laid out the four major points in Google's argument:

• Sun gave Java to the public
  
• Google used "free and open technologies" in developing Android
  
• Google made fair use of the Java language APIs in Android
  
• Sun publicly approved Google's use of Java in Android

Van Nest hammered this point home again and again, insisting that "copyright infringement requires that you copy something. There was no copying here, because Google knew it couldn't use Sun's source code." He also referred to the jury's instructions to judge the work as a whole, including 166 class libraries that amount to over 2.8 million lines of code, attempting to shift the burden of proof to Oracle. His, hope is to leave the jury with the thought in mind that Oracle must prove that it was, "more likely than not that copyright infringement had occurred."


In addition, a great deal of Nest's closing testimony focused on the testimony of former Sun CEO, Jonathon Schwartz, who said, "For years, Sun had been promoting use of the Java programming language...That was their whole business plan." During Schwartz' testimony last Thursday, in fact, Google's counsel referred to a 2007 blog post in which Schwartz congratulated Google on Android. Schwartz also said under oath that "Oracle doesn't have any grounds to Sue." Van Nest then said, "If that isn't an affirmative endorsement of a product, I don't know what is." In counterpoint, Michael Jacobs said that Schwartz did not have the legal understanding to make that determination. Furthermore, Van Nest trotted out a video of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison from 2009, in which Ellison says that he expects to see "many more Java devices from our friends at Google," and the Google had done "a fantastic job [in opening up Java]."

The jury will also have to consider whether or not Google actually makes money off of Android. Exact financial numbers regarding Android revenue have been banned from the trial, however, Van Nest reminded the jury that "Google doesn't make any money licensing or selling Android." This was also part of Larry Page's testimony, in which he called Android, "a vehicle for Google services," and not "an essential part of our business."


Van Nest's final point concerned Oracle's argument about how Google has "fragmented" the Java platform.


He then presented a number of slides and e-mails that show how Sun fragmented Java itself, and knew it was doing so.

In his rebuttal, Oracle counsel Michael Jacobs again made his point that Google has copied extensively from Java. On the jury's verdict form, the first question reads, "As to the compilable code for the 37 Java API packages in question taken as a group: Has Oracle proven that Google has infringed the overall structure, sequence and organization of copyrighted works?" Jacobs' claim is an emphatic "yes". He told jurors that the central question in the case is "pretty basic". He reviewed testimony from experts, such as John Mitchell, a computer science professor from Stanford University. Mitchell said that, "...there is no way Google could have created Android without directly copying code and documentation from Oracle."

On that point, Google has said that some of their engineers may have had previous knowledge of Java and its code, however, Dalvik is built independently. Jacobs encouraged the jurors not to buy that argument. If that were the case, they would be looking at a "clean room" interpretation, in which Android would have been built from scratch. Instead, Jacobs said that "the room was very dirty." He claims that 400 classes, 45 methods, and 700 declarations, encompassing about 11,000 pages of code amounted to "property taken by Google."

For Google to prove fair use, and win their argument, they must show that Android is very different from the work it was built from, or that it is not used for profit. Jacobs says that neither of those is the case. He argues that Android is just the Java APIs for mobile devices, and that while Android is free to use, Google makes a great deal of money off of the platform through its services and ad revenues.

Jacobs referred back to several Google e-mails, which he claims detail the breakdown of talks between Google and Sun. After negotiations for a possible partnership failed, Google was aware that Sun would not greenlight the use of Java, and that it would lead to fragmentation of the Java platform. Jacobs' argument on this point is that "you can't copy APIs simply because coders are familiar with the status quo, and would not want to learn new ones."

After the jury heard both arguments, deliberations began with only an hour left in the session. No conclusion was reached as of yesterday, and deliberations were set to continue at 8 a.m. this morning. Once the jury hands down its verdict, regardless of what it is, the case will then move into the second phase regarding patents. Each side will give arguments for Oracle's claim that Google has violated U.S. patent #5,966,702. Unfortunately, that patent expired. However, Oracle attempted to have it reinstated, which the patent office denied. When Oracle appealed the decision, the patent office changed its mind, but it will be up to Judge Alsup whether or not to allow it back into the case. Should the judge decide against allowing the patent back into the trial, it will proceed immediately to the damages phase.


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