San Francisco — Setting the stage for a showdown of two Silicon Valley heavyweights, Oracle issued a press release late Thursday saying it has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Google’s popular Android operating system has infringed on copyrights and patents related to Java, which Oracle acquired along with Sun Microsystems earlier this year.
Android, which was first introduced in late 2008, has witnessed surging adoption by computer manufacturers as an operating system for smartphones and other portable devices.
The concise terse states: “In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their violation,” Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement.
The suit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco and seeks a jury trial, says that “Android (including without limitation the Dalvik VM and the Android software development kit) and gadgets that operate Android infringe one or more claims of each of United States Patents Nos. 6,125,447; 6,192,476; 5,966,702; 7,426,720; RE38,104; 6,910,205; and 6,061,520.”
While Redwood Shores-based Oracle did not described the amount of compensation it will seek, one analyst said the demand could be high. But he also suggested the lawsuit may be a strategic move by Oracle in the course of a larger negotiating effort.
“At the end of the day, it could mean a fair amount of money,” said Al Hilwa, a software industry expert at the IDC tech research firm. Based on other similar past disputes, he added, it is likely that the two companies have been negotiating quietly for months.
“Going public with a lawsuit may well be part of a strategy by Oracle for trying to force the issue,” Hilwa said.
A representative of Mountain View-based Google said that the company had not yet been served with the lawsuit, and therefore declined to comment until it had a chance to examine it. An Oracle spokeswoman also refused to comment beyond the complaint.
Oracle received Sun Microsystems’ Java technology when it acquired the company earlier this year. Java is a software element that allows applications written in Java to run on virtually any computer so long as it has a Java virtual machine installed.
When Google developed Android it included a Java compatible technology called Dalvik with the phone OS. Dalvik was developed as a “clean room” version of Java, meaning Google built it from the ground up without using any Sun technology or intellectual property, said Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney.
“You cannot just take a Java application from a Sun environment, where it is licensed, and run it on Android. You have to recompile it to Dalvik,” Dulaney said.
The lawsuit came as a shock to many in the industry, and it may ultimately turn on complex points of intellectual property law. Sun Microsystems, whose engineers developed the widely used Java programming language and related tools, decided several years ago to release key elements of the Java code under an open-source license that allows others to use it freely.
“Java is essential for Android,” said Hilwa, adding that “since Android has been out there for more than a year, most people would have hoped they were in compliance with whatever license terms apply.”
Dulaney said Oracle’s claims could be “hard to prove” and that a legal conflict could take a long time. “What they will have to argue about is whether Google did a purely clean-room Java or if they have someone with inside knowledge of the code,” he said.
Dalvik is one option for writing Android applications; developers can also use HTML 5 and the C language. But Dalvik is employed for some of the core Android applications, such as email, Dulaney said. However, it was unclear Thursday if Oracle approached Google to discuss its concerns before it filed the lawsuit.
A copy of the complaint follows belowOracle’s complaint against Google for Java patent infringement