As the Oracle vs. Google trial entered phase one, Andy Rubin, the founder of Android and senior Vice President of Mobile at Google stated in court that engineers working on Android were unaware of Sun’s patents regarding the Java programming language.
Rubin has made several appearances before the 12 jurors in the past few weeks, defending Google in the case. Oracle, on the other hand, has brought to the jury’s notice emails that were internally exchanged which indicate that Google, and possibly Rubin, were well aware of Sun’s patents. Rubin was questioned regarding the fact that his team referred to Dalvik, the virtual machine on which Android runs, as a Java Virtual Machine. In his defense, Rubin clarified that these terms were used interchangeably within the team and not publicly as these monikers are often trademarked. Besides, his developers were referring to the Java programming language which is free to use. Oracle possibly wanted to prove Google claims of not being aware of Sun’s patents false through Rubin’s testimony.
According to Rubin, before July 2010, he was not aware of any possibility of a lawsuit rising over Sun’s patents regarding Java. He strongly believes that an engineer should refrain from studying another invention while trying to come up with an invention of his own. When questioned about why his team failed to find out about Sun’s patents, he pointed out that there exists millions of patents in the world and it is not possible for an engineer to be aware of them all. Besides, in his opinion, virtual machines were hardly new when Sun came up with the Java Virtual Machine.
However, the chain of emails sent between Rubin and his Android team members from August 2007 were discussed and questions were raised regarding the mention of Rubin not wanting to opt for Sun’s GPL license. Mention of Google walking away from Sun after having negotiated for nine months, following threats of being sued for patent infringement from Sun, was also found. When repeatedly questioned regarding him being unaware of any lawsuit over Sun’s patents, Rubin stressed on the fact that he was referring to other units at Google, not particularly Android.
Working in favour of Google was the blog post by Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun at the time of the debut of Android, wherein he talks highly of Android’s future, indicating that Google was not violating any norms as per Sun Microsystems back then.
