Interestingly, two of the patents that Oracle is suing Google over were filed by now Google employees:
- Methods and system for performing static initialization, by Frank Yellin.
- Interpreting functions utilizing a hybrid of virtual and native machine, by Lars Bak (software engineer on the V8 Javascript virtual machine).
I don’t mean to single out these two individuals, this is business as usual. Tech companies are pretty good at providing financial incentives to get their employees to file patents, and as long as these patents pass the simple “prior art” Litmus test, the company will be happy to file them and add them to their portfolio. I have filed my share of patents at the companies I worked on, including Sun (that was more than ten years ago).
#1 by Mikk on August 14, 2010 - 3:22 am
What do you mean by “prior art Litmus test”?
#2 by Miroslav Pokorny on August 15, 2010 - 4:30 pm
This is just the start, im sure Oracle is researching what other infringements of their Java platform have occurred, and this will continue until Google end up paying some never ending yearly licensing agreement.