Oracle Corp. on Thursday filed a copyright and patent infringement claim against Google over its Android operating system, reports the Financial Times. The patents relate to the widely-used Java software, which was firstly developed by Sun Microsystems as a cross-platform environment that enabled different platforms to run the same software.

"In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement," said Karen Tillman, a spokeswoman for Oracle, reports Bloomberg news-agency.

The complaint targets Google’s Dalvik virtual machine, one of the operating system services used to run applications on the smartphones. Oracle says the software was created using the Java platform as Google hired former Sun developers, who knew of the Java technology. It is noteworthy that while Java was originally designed as a proprietary language that needed to be licensed from Sun, the latter eventually initiated making open-source flavours of Java products available, which means that the code can be used freely by third-party programmers.

One of the things that is not clear in the situation is that Oracle at present does not seem to have ambitions to enter the market of operating systems for mobile phones. Typically, companies sue either direct rivals or other firms with huge market potential or shares. It is unlikely that Oracle has plans to enter the market of consumer cell phones; moreover, with the acquisition of Sun Microelectronics the company is more than interested in development of demanding mobile applications that would require strong back-end provided by Oracle and Sun. It is definitely not in Oracle's interest to slowdown development of Android. Nonetheless, Oracle still decided to sue Google for infringements of patents that it got with the takeover of Sun.

"We are disappointed Oracle has chosen to attack both Google and the open-source Java community with this baseless lawsuit. The open- source Java community goes beyond any one corporation and works every day to make the Web a better place. We will strongly defend open-source standards and will continue to work with the industry to develop the Android platform," said Aaron Zamost, a Google spokesman, reports Bloomberg.

Tags: Google, Oracle, Sun, Android, Java