Intellectual property protection for software has long been a concern, both for innovators seeking to protect their work as well as innovators seeking to make use of existing works for.
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May 13, 2021
On Tuesday, Oracle America Inc. and Oracle International Corporation filed suit against Envisage Technologies LLC for misappropriating a version of Oracle Database, its proprietary data storage, retrieval, and manipulation software. The San Francisco, California lawsuit contended that Envisage is using its unlicensed access to Oracle’s product to obtain subscription revenue from its customers.
According to the filing, Envisage is an independent software vendor that specializes in developing, marketing, and selling software solutions. As such, it reportedly “hosts data for large customer accounts, including federal, state, and local government entities that typically have large workloads.”
Oracle stated that in 2006, Envisage purchased a perpetual license and support services for Oracle Database Standard Edition 1 (SE1) for $8,500, as an initial pilot for one account. Reportedly, that license permits Envisage to run SE1 on two processors, w
US Supreme Court Rules on Key Software Development Practice
Each year for the annual Open Source Security and Risk Analysis report, the authors highlight key aspects around open source that you likely wouldn’t expect. In the 2020 edition, we gave some coverage to the Google LLC v Oracle America, Inc. case before the US Supreme Court. In case you missed it, Oracle sued Google over Google’s use of Java SE API signatures in Android. Android is open source, but a ruling against Google could have had ramifications for the entire development community – not just open source communities.
Most modern software systems use APIs of one form or another. Mobile applications talk with server systems over APIs. IoT systems use APIs to send sensor data for analysis. Complex distributed micro-services architectures are also API driven, as is much of the data economy. These APIs are the grandkids of the type of API that Google was accused of misusing, but none-t
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//]]>// >By John K. Higgins
May 5, 2021 10:19 AM PT
A legal dispute between Google and Oracle over software copyrights has now been decided, with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of Google. The Court s decision in
Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc. was released on April 5, 2021.
The decision ended 10 years of tortuous litigation. While the Court definitively addressed the dispute between the two high tech giants, it put aside answering one critical infringement factor. Still, the ruling appeared to reduce the legal leverage available to software developers who seek copyright protection.
Oracle contends the decision could have a chilling effect on copyright protection. The Google platform just got bigger and market power greater the barriers to entry higher and the ability to compete lower. They stole Java and spent a decade litigating as only a monopolist can. This behavior is exactly why regulatory authorities around the world and in the United States are examin