Oracle will get to question Google cofounder Larry Page under terms set by a US judge presiding over a patent suit pitting the business software titan against the Internet giant.
Oracle can depose Page “for a maximum of two hours, excluding breaks” regarding the value of Android and whether Google intentionally infringed on patents at issue, judge Donna Ryu said in a written decision on Thursday.
“[Page] reportedly made the decision to acquire Android Inc, and thereby develop and launch the platform that Oracle now contends infringes its patents and copyrights,” Oracle lawyers said in their request to the court.
“Oracle believes that Mr Page’s testimony will likely be relevant with respect to a number of other key issues in this case as well, including the value of the infringement to Google,” the letter continued.
Google has asked to depose its chief executive, Larry Ellison, in the case.
Oracle is accusing Google’s Android software of infringing on Java computer programming language patents held by Oracle stemming from its recent purchase of Java inventor Sun Microsystems.
Google has denied the patent infringement claims and said it believes mobile phone makers and other users of its open-source Android operating system are entitled to use the Java technology in dispute.
Google opposed the bid to question Page and three other current or former executives in the final weeks of the discovery process, saying that Oracle was “gnashing its teeth with an -eleventh-hour attempt to cram” in more depositions.
Ryu is also allowing Oracle to depose two of its other targets, Bob Lee and Tim Lindholm.
Oracle this week complained to Ryu that Google is not providing answers to questions about the Mountain View, California-based company’s non-mobile businesses.
Oracle wants Google to reveal details such as total search volume broken down by keywords and the Web content it indexes.
Google has resisted with the reasoning that those facts are not relevant to the case because Android powers smartphones and tablet computers, according to Oracle.
Google has maintained that Sun, before it was acquired by Oracle, had declared that Java would be open-source, allowing any software developer to use it, and released some of its source code in 2006 and 2007.
Oracle completed its acquisition of Sun, a one-time Silicon Valley star, in January last year and subsequently filed suit against Google.
Google won a round in the pretrial proceedings when US District Judge William Alsup rejected a bid by Oracle to use an expert witness’ testimony who said damages in the case could be as much as US$6.1 billion.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts