….from: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-oracle-going-to-trial-as-settlement-tal...
Google, Oracle going to trial as settlement talks collapse By Rachel King | April 2, 2012, 1:22pm PDT
Summary: After trying to give an out-of-court settlement one last chance, it is definite that Google and Oracle will now go to trial.
It’s on: Google and Oracle are set to go to trial two weeks from today now that a last-ditch attempt at a settlement has failed.
Last week, Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal asked both parties to give settlement talks another chance, with a decision required by April 9. Even though they had another week, it must have been clear that a settlement just isn’t in the cards.
Google did propose an offer that included a cut of Android’s revenue stream through 2018, which was a stipulation for damages if (and only if) Oracle prevails on patent infringement.
Grewal — the same judge who presided over similarly failed settlement talks last fall — issued a memo on Monday explained that “the parties have reached an irreconcilable impasse in their settlement discussions with the undersigned,” and that “no further conferences shall be convened.”
Even more simply, Grewal wrote “in the end, some cases just need to be tried.”
He also wished them both “good luck” when Google and Oracle’s legal teams meet up at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco in front of Judge William H. Alsup on April 16.
This latest turn of events is just one of many in the patent infringement battle between Oracle and Google.
Oracle is suing Google over Java-related patents and technology that appear on the Android mobile operating system. Google’s lawyers have repeatedly responded by discussing Google’s relationship with Sun Microsystems, Java’s creator now owned by Oracle. Google argued that Sun was a big fan of Android from the start, seeing it as a tool to “spread news and word about Java.”
Since last July, there have been a number of delays to getting a trial underway with proposed failed start dates in October 2011 and March 2012.