Claiming egregious IP infringement, Oracle (ORCL) has filed a lawsuit against Google (GOOG), charging that the search giant’s mobile operating system, Android, infringes Oracle patents and copyrights related to Java.
The suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, concerns intellectual property related to the Java programming language and computing platform, which Oracle purchased through its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems in April of last year.
“In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property,” Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement.”
Oracle also noted in the complaint that “Google has been aware of Sun’s patent portfolio, including the patents at issue, since the middle of this decade, when Google hired certain former Sun Java engineers”. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who joined Sun Microsystems in 1983, led the Java development team at Sun prior to becoming CEO of Novell in 1997, and later Google in 2001.
The suit was filed Thursday and seeks a jury trial.
Here is an embedded copy of Oracle’s complaint:
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