A PATENT trial between tech giants Oracle and Google should be held before November, a US judge has said at a hearing.
Oracle sued Google last year, claiming the web search company’s Android mobile operating technology infringes on Oracle’s Java patents. Oracle bought the Java programming language through its $7.4 billion (€5.1 billion) acquisition of Sun Microsystems in January 2010.
Some industry analysts see the lawsuit as a sign of a growing business rivalry between the two companies. In a San Francisco federal courtroom on Wednesday, District Judge William Alsup said he had limited resources and only one law clerk assigned to the highly technical case.
The clerk is departing the post in November and Judge Alsup said he did not want a new one to have to learn the case details.
“Some jury is going to be sitting over there come October,” he said. He did not set a formal trial date, but the companies could settle at any time. An Oracle spokeswoman declined to comment, while Google representatives did not respond to requests for comment. – (Reuters)
