Judge Rules on Contested Evidence in Oracle-Google Case
22.05.12
Judge William Alsup once again ruled that a potentially damaging email from Google engineer Tim Lindholm can be admitted at trial, according to a ruling made Wednesday in US District Court for the Northern District of California.
"What we've actually been asked to do by Larry and Sergey is to investigate what technology alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome," Lindholm wrote in the August 2010 email, referring to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. "We've been over a hundred of these and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java."
Google had repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to keep the email out of the trial over the past year, arguing that it was subject to attorney-client privilege and that Oracle had revealed it in violation of a protective order.
Google had also provided a declaration from Lindholm in which he stated that before writing the email, he "had not reviewed any of the patents and copyrights at issue before writing the email, nor had he reviewed any of the source code or implementation for the allegedly infringing aspects of Android, and he did not (and had no legal training necessary to) analyze whether Android infringed," Alsup wrote. "This attorney-prepared declaration is unpersuasive."
Source: PCWorld