Google has made a sweeping request that a court throw out the copyright- and patent-infringement lawsuit filed in August by Oracle over Java use in Android, a popular, open-source mobile phone platform created by Google.
In its response to the lawsuit, filed late Monday, Google denies all seven patent-infringement charges, and, in a separate motion, requests that the single copyright-infringement claim be either dismissed or clarified because Google finds it “legally deficient.”
Google is also making a counterclaim, seeking declaratory judgment of non-infringement and invalidity of the patent-infringement allegations made by Oracle.
A hearing has been set for Nov. 18 for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, to hear arguments for and against Google’s motion to dismiss the copyright claim specifically.
Google is asking the court to not only dismiss Oracle’s lawsuit, but to also rule in favor of Google’s counterclaims and to state that Google hasn’t incurred in the alleged patent infringement and that the patents in question are invalid.
“It’s disappointing that after years of supporting open source, Oracle turned around to attack not just Android, but the entire open source Java community with vague software patent claims,” a Google spokesman said Tuesday via e-mail regarding Monday’s filings.
Oracle has said that Google “knowingly, directly and repeatedly” violated Java programming language intellectual property that Oracle obtained when earlier this year it acquired Sun Microsystems.
In particular, Oracle is objecting to the Dalvik Java compatible technology Google developed for Android. Dalvik is a virtual machine optimized for mobile devices. All Android applications run in their own process with their own Dalvik instance, according to official Android documentation.