IDG News Service, James Niccolai, Paul Krill

Most of the jurors in the Oracle v Google trial thought Google's use of 37 Java APIs in Android should be allowed under the doctrine of fair use, one of the jurors revealed Wednesday after the trial had ended.

Nine jurors thought Google's use of the APIs (application programming interfaces) should be considered fair use, Greg Thompson, the jury foreman, told reporters outside the courtroom. But the other three jurors, including Thompson, did not buy that argument.

Google's Android operating system does not infringe Oracle's Java patents, a jury in San Francisco found Wednesday in a setback for Oracle.

The jury delivered its verdict after more than a week of deliberations. It found no infringement of any of the claims in two Java-related patents Oracle had asserted, court documents show.

A judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission has determined that a Kodak patent asserted in a complaint against Apple and Research In Motion is invalid, Kodak said on Monday.

The administrative law judge at the ITC concluded that Apple's iPhone 3G and some RIM BlackBerry devices do infringe the patent, but he also determined that the patent itself is invalid, meaning the infringement finding does Kodak little good, at least for now.

Unconfirmed reports say that Android 5 "Jelly Bean" could be released this fall, featuring such improvements as Chrome browser integration, better enterprise security, better power management, and maybe dual-booting support for Microsoft's Windows 8. Google did not respond to requests for comment about its future OS plans.

But Android developers at this week's AnDevCon developer conference were too busy dealing with current releases like Android 4 "Ice Cream Sandwich" to stall their development efforts for yet another OS upgrade. "You have to deal with what's available now," said Chris Morris, a developer for the Weather Channel.

Mozilla Marketplace, which is Mozilla's entrant in the online application store arena, is set to move to a public beta stage in a few weeks, a company official said on Tuesday.

The browser-accessible marketplace will feature applications built using Web development technologies, including HTML5 for structure; Cascading Style Sheets for layout, visual aesthetics, and visual behaviors; and JavaScript for logical implementation. The store will accept multiple types of applications and is not limited to mobile device software, said Mozilla's Joe Stagner, at the AnDevCon III conference in Burlingame, Calif. Mozilla announced in February that the marketplace was open for developer submissions.

Oracle was dealt a minor setback in its lawsuit against Google on Wednesday when a judge denied its motion to toss out one of Google's key defenses against copyright infringement.

A jury on Monday found Google had infringed Oracle's copyrights on the APIs (application programming interfaces) in Java, but was unable to agree on whether that infringement was protected by "fair use," which allows for copying under certain circumstances.

Google's engineers never studied other companies' patents while developing Android for fear of allowing those patents to influence their design decisions, Google's Android chief Andy Rubin testified on the stand Wednesday.

"I believe when you're an engineer you shouldn't study someone else's inventions when you're trying to come up with your own," Rubin testified under rebuttal questioning by one of Google's lawyers.

A jury has found that Google infringed Oracle's Java copyrights in Android but could not decide unanimously if the infringement was protected by "fair use."

The jury's verdict, delivered Monday after a week of deliberation, is a partial victory for Oracle in its lawsuit against Google, but Oracle will have to wait longer -- possibly for a retrial -- to see whether Google will escape liability with its claim of fair use.

A jury has found Google liable for copyright infringement in its use of Java in Android, but has not managed to decide whether that infringement was protected by rules governing "fair use."

The verdict, delivered Monday after a week of jury deliberation, is a partial victory for Oracle in its lawsuit against Google, but Oracle will have to wait longer -- possibly for a retrial -- to see whether Google will escape liability with its claim of fair use.

A jury has found that Google infringed Oracle's Java copyrights in Android but could not decide unanimously if the infringement was protected by "fair use."

The jury's verdict, delivered Monday after a week of deliberation, is a partial victory for Oracle in its lawsuit against Google, but Oracle will have to wait longer -- possibly for a retrial -- to see whether Google will escape liability with its claim of fair use.

Google's attorney, Robert Van Nest, immediately told the judge that Google would file for a mistrial. Google's argument will be that the same jury must decide both the copyright infringement and fair use issues. The judge told both sides to submit legal briefs on that issue.

The jury has reached a partial verdict in the copyright phase of Oracle's intellectual property dispute with Google, and the judge has given them more time to try to resolve the remaining issue.

The jury foreman told the court on Friday that the 12-member panel had reached unanimous agreement on all but one of the questions on the verdict form, but that they're at an "impasse" over that final issue.

As the jury deliberates its verdict in the copyright phase of Oracle's lawsuit against Google, both sides are watching for signs from the jury as to which way it is leaning. On Wednesday it might have given them one.

The jury has asked a few clarification questions of the judge since it began deliberating the case late Monday morning. On Wednesday, the jury asked a question about Google's "fair use" defense.