Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Google's acquisition of IBM patents may aid its Oracle case | Digital Media - CNET News

Speculation about Google’s patent strategy – but I doubt IBM would have been shy about exercising its patents against Oracle

The newest batch of patents from IBM have only a handful of mobile telephony applications. Instead, they are rich in database intellectual property, including patent 6442548, titled "database interface for database unaware products," and patent 7831632, titled "method and system for reconstruction of object model data in a relational database."

That could be useful in Google's ongoing litigation with Oracle. The database giant sued Google in August 2010 for infringing on copyrights and patents related to Java, which Oracle acquired along with Sun Microsystems earlier that year. The companies have been publicly sparring in a case that's expected to go to trial this year. The database patents could give Google ammunition to prod Oracle toward settling the case, rather than facing a suit over alleged infringement of the IBM-developed intellectual property.

Google's acquisition of IBM patents may aid its Oracle case | Digital Media - CNET News

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