Oracle Seeks $1.16 Billion in Damages From Google in Patent Case

Oracle estimates that it should receive about $1.16 billion in damages due to Google's alleged infringement of Oracle's Java patents and copyrights in creating the Android mobile operating system.

In a letter filed with the court Sept. 22, Oracle's attorneys said Google mischaracterizes the report by Oracle's damages expert and mistakenly claimed that Oracle was seeking more than $2.2 billion in damages. Instead, the letter indicates that Oracle is seeking $176 million to $202 million for patent-infringement damages, between $102.6 million to $136.2 million for copyright-infringement damages and $823.9 million in infringer's profits. Added together, the maximum of these figures amounts to just over $1.16 billion.

Oracle filed suit against Google in August 2010 for infringing Java patents and copyrights that Oracle received when it acquired Sun Microsystems earlier that year.

Oracle's letter to U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing the case, was intended to beat back Google's attempt to have the court disregard the report by Oracle's damages expert, Iain Cockburn, a professor of business at Boston University. Google is seeking to file a Daubert motion against Cockburn's report. A Daubert motion is used to exclude the testimony of an expert witness by arguing the witness does not possess the requisite level of expertise or used questionable methods to obtain data.

In its letter, Oracle argued: "Adding what Sun expected to earn from a compatible Android, but lost when Google infringed the copyrights and fragmented Java is consistent with" existing case law.