In the Android infringement litigation of Oracle Inc. (ORCL: Quote) against Google Inc. (GOOG), the U.S. District Judge William Alsup, presiding over the trial in San Francisco, sent the 12-member jury home yesterday, to start the trial "fresh" today, Bloomberg said Friday.
A juror in Oracle reportedly raised doubts about not reaching a unanimous verdict, and possibility the panel is deadlocked.
Looking at a Google document that is sealed from public view, Alsup reportedly said Google's Android mobile platform resulted in a net loss for the company in every quarter of 2010, despite a $97.7 million in revenue for the first quarter of the year. The document showed that Google made "a small profit" for the second half of 2011.
The two Silicon Valley tech giants were locked in two years of patent infringement litigation. The Java developer's lawsuit in the U.S. District Court claims that the search engine giant's Android operating system infringes intellectual property rights relating to the programming language. Android is one of the most widely-used operating systems in smartphones.
Oracle, a business hardware and software provider, is reportedly claiming about $1 billion in compensation in the trial that is expected to last up to 10 weeks - likely lasting until the end of June.
In its lawsuit, filed in August 2010, Oracle argues that its possibility of licensing Java to mobile phone makers was undermined by Google, which uses Java intellectual property, and then giving Android away for free.
Google had argued that the technologies involved should not be covered by copyright law. Jurors have to decide whether Google has added something new or functional to Java that is in the public interest.
Oracle shares closed Thursday's regular trading at $29.38 on the Nasdaq, while Google ended at $611.02.
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by RTT Staff Writer
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