Google did not infringe patents of Oracle Corp. (which it obtained with the acquisition of Sun Microsystems), a federal jury found on Thursday. As a result, Oracle will either have to oppose the decision, or drop demands to receive as much as $1 billion in compensations for copyright damages. Oracle itself claims that damages were as high as $6 billion.

“Today’s jury verdict that Android does not infringe Oracle’s patents was a victory not just for Google but the entire Android ecosystem,” said Catherine Lacavera, Google’s director of litigation.

The 10-person jury ruled unanimously that neither of the two patents at issue was infringed. Jurors found May 7 that Google infringed Oracle’s copyrights and deadlocked on whether it was “fair use”, which blocks Oracle's ability to seek as much as $1 billion in damages from Google, reports Bloomberg news-agency.

While Oracle is seeking about $1 billion in copyright damages, the patent damages in play are much lower, noted Reuters news-agency. In the event it lost on patent liability, Google offered to pay Oracle roughly $2.8 million in damages on the two patents outstanding in the case, covering the period through 2011. For future damages, Google proposed paying Oracle 0.5% of Android revenue on one patent until it expires in December, 2012, and 0.015% on a second patent until it expires in April 2018. Oracle rejected the proposal.

"Oracle presented overwhelming evidence at trial that Google knew it would fragment and damage Java. We plan to continue to defend and uphold Java’s core write-once run-anywhere principle and ensure it is protected for the nine million Java developers and the community that depend on Java compatibility,” said Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Oracle.

Tags: Google, Android, Oracle, Java, Sun