LEAK: GOOGLE DOCUMENT DISCUSSES GIVING MOTOROLA ANDROID TIME ADVANTAGE

An internal document released to Judge Alsup, in the Oracle v. Google lawsuit, indicates Google will give, or has been giving, certain partners a lead time advantage with their Android OS. The document specifically states:

Lead device concept: Give early access to the software to partners who build and distribute devices to our specification (ie, Motorola and Verizon). They get a non-contractual time to market advantage and in return they align to our standard.

Now that Google has purchased Motorola this might be viewed as illegal by some, mainly the US Justice Department who is looking into the acquisition for a possible monopoly issue. Other Android OEM's, like HTC, while saying everything is fine, are probably starting to look at other OS'es available...Microsoft's Windows Phone anyone?

ORACLE MUST RE-SUBMIT DAMAGES COST FOR GOOGLE; JUDGE TELLS THEM TO BE REALISTIC

The war between Google and Oracle is far from over, but the big G keeps racking up tiny victories in what are admittedly modest battles. Now Oracle has been told to go back to the drawing board with its damages report. Originally Oracle sought $2.6 billion, but its theories were largely dismissed and Judge William Alsup suggested an alternative starting point of roughly $100 million. The company still has an opportunity to present a new report, one that will likely seek much more than the proposed $100 million, but things are looking increasingly tough for the claimant.

It wasn't all good news for Google, though. While the judge told Oracle to narrow its focus from Android as a whole to just specific infringing features, he did agree that related advertising revenue should be included in the theoretical royalty base. He also offered harsh criticism for what he viewed as its "brazen" disregard for intellectual property rights.

The trial is still scheduled for October, so we should have a better idea of how this whole thing will play out by Halloween.

USPTO REJECTS SEVERAL OF ORACLE'S PATENT CLAIMS AGAINST GOOGLE

Much ink has been spilled about Oracle's lawsuit against Google for Android's allegedly unlawful use of Java, and rightfully so, considering Team Ellison's seeking to take more than a billion dollar chunk out of Google's bottom line. Just because Oracle's damage calculations add up to ten figures doesn't mean that the court will agree with them, however. And, there's a long legal road to be tread before the court can assign a dollar value to the case -- namely it must determine if the patent claims and copyrights are valid and whether Android actually infringes them.

That's why Google requested the USPTO re-examine the patents asserted by Oracle, as the process gives Google a shot at invalidating them outside the courtroom. It looks like the strategy is paying off, as one of those re-exams recently resulted in a rejection of 17 of the patent's 21 claims -- which reduces the number of claims Oracle can assert in court accordingly. Of course, those four remaining claims plus the 118 contained in the other six asserted patents (should they survive the re-examination process) could still spell doom for the little green bots, but it is a victory, albeit a modest one, for the team in Mountain View. So, Oracle may have a few less IP bullets to fire Google's way, but it's still got plenty of other legal ammo left.

ORACLE'S LAWSUIT AGAINST GOOGLE SEEKS BILLIONS IN DAMAGES

Oracle Corp is seeking damages "in the billions of dollars" from Google Inc in a patent lawsuit over the smartphone market, according to a court filing.

The disclosure on Thursday was the first time either side publicly mentioned the cumulative scale of Oracle's damages claims.

Oracle sued Google last year, claiming the Web search company's Android mobile operating technology infringes Oracle's Java patents. Oracle bought the Java programing language through its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in January 2010.

Some see the lawsuit as a sign of a growing business rivalry between the two companies.

Barring any settlements, a trial between Oracle and Google is expected to begin by November.

ORACLE TURNS OVER OPENOFFICE TO COMMUNITY GROUP

Last year, the LibreOffice project split away from Oracle’s OpenOffice.org (OOo). More than 30 developers were part of the original exodus, and with backing from heavy hitters like Google, Canonical, Novell, and Red Hat The Document Foundation hit the ground running with its alternative to the already-alternative productive suite, LibreOffice. Those sponsors had previously lent their support to Oracle’s project, and eventually the defections would prove to be more than Oracle could cope with. It became virtually impossible for the company to continue maintaining OpenOffice. With LibreOffice now the default offering in Ubuntu 11.04 and a good number of smaller Linux distributions following suit, interest in OOo seems to be spiraling down the drain.

Fast forward to today, and Oracle has decided to wash its hands of OpenOffice (mostly). Control will be handed over to a community group, and Chief Corporate Architect Edward Screven says Oracle will work with supporters in order “to further the continued success of Open Office.”

As Ars Technica points out, it’s little more than a symbolic gesture at this point since the bulk of the OOo community has already moved on and pledged support to the LibreOffice fork. There’s no word yet on whether Oracle will give up the OpenOffice.org branding, though it seems unlikely given that it refused to let the LibreOffice crew have it once already.

Screven does go on to state that Oracle will continue lending a hand with the adoption of standards-based, open formats like .ODF. That’s not a surprise considering Oracle’s history of involvement with open initiatives like Linux and MySQL.

APPLE TAKES HUGE HIT IN NASDAQ-100

NASDAQ on Tuesday announced that it will adjust the weighing of several companies in the NASDAQ-100 index to better reflect their market capitalizations. The NASDAQ-100 index is comprised of the 100 biggest non-financial stocks on the NASDAQ exchange. The adjustment, which will take place on May 2nd, is the first of its kind since 1998. Apple will take the biggest hit as its weighting will be adjusted down from 20.46% of the the index to 12.33%. The Cupertino-based company’s representation on the NASDAQ-100 is currently six times that of the No. 2 company, Microsoft, which will see its weight doubled on May 2nd. A total of 82 stocks will be adjusted downward while 18 companies including Microsoft, Google, Intel, Cisco and Oracle will get larger shares.

MICROSOFT SUES MOTOROLA FOR PATENT INFRINGEMENT

It was only a matter of time before this happened.  A few weeks ago Microsoft released a statement saying due to lawsuits for patent infringement Android was more expensive than Windows Phone 7 (WP7).  Now, Microsoft is suing one of the largest Android manufacturers for patent infringement.....surprise!

Microsoft is claiming infringement on nine software patents.   These are:

• 5,579,517: Common name space for long and short filenames
• 5,758,352: Common name space for long and short filenames
• 6,621,746: Monitoring entropic conditions of a flash memory device as an indicator for invoking erasure operations
• 6,826,762: Radio interface layer in a cell phone with a set of APIs having a hardware-independent proxy layer and a hardware-specific driver layer
• 6,909,910: Method and system for managing changes to a contact database
• 7,644,376: Flexible architecture for notifying applications of state changes
• 5,664,133: Context sensitive menu system/menu behavior
• 6,578,054: Method and system for supporting off-line mode of operation and synchronization using resource state information
• 6,370,566: Generating meeting requests and group scheduling from a mobile device

In a nutshell the patents all cover basic smartphone experiences related to email, calendar and contact syncing; scheduling meetings; notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.

Microsoft released a statement saying "We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year in bringing innovative software products and services to market. Our action today merely seeks to ensure respect for our intellectual property rights infringed by Android devices; and judging by the recent actions by Apple and Oracle, we are not alone in this respect" [Ars Technica]