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SAN FRANCISCO--A jury today unanimously decided that Google did not infringe on two of Oracle's patents.

In the decision at the U.S. District Court of Northern California, the jury in the trial said Google did not infringe on six claims in U.S. Patent No. RE38,104 as well as two claims in U.S. Patent No. 6,061,520.

The verdict is a win for Google, and marks the end of the trial's second phase, which focused on the claims of patent infringement. Closing arguments in the case were made last week. After the decision, a … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Nearly a week into deliberations in the patent phase of the Oracle v. Google lawsuit, the 10-person jury seems to be mired in technical aspects of the patent dispute, prompting a mild complaint directed at the lawyers from an obviously exasperated judge today.

After drumming up his best answer to the latest of a series of jury questions this week, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court of Northern California seemed to lose patience with the proceedings. "That's the best I can do. This is not easy for me. It's not easy … Read more

The high-profile Flashback Trojan that is estimated to have infected more than 600,000 Macs at its peak earlier this year would have earned its creators $14,000 in the course of three weeks.

The only hitch is that the money isn't going anywhere.

In a blog post today, security firm Symantec says the pay-per-click provider the malware makers were using spotted the activity as fraudulent.

"Many (pay-per-click) providers employ anti-fraud measures and affiliate-verification processes before paying. Fortunately, the attackers in this instance appear to have been unable to complete the necessary steps to be paid," the … Read more

European authorities who earlier cracked down on Microsoft's browser behavior are now are keeping an eye on its upcoming Windows RT operating system -- but they aren't saying yet whether they have any objections.

Mozilla last week criticized Microsoft's choice to deny browsers other than Internet Explorer privileges necessary to make what it sees as a competitive browser on Windows RT, the new version of the operating system for ARM processors. Specifically, IE gets access to deeper Win32 interfaces, but Firefox, other browsers, and any other third-party software only get access to the new and more limited WinRT interface. … Read more

Douglas Crockford, a power of the JavaScript world, has moved from Yahoo to PayPal.

Bill Scott, PayPal's senior director of user interface engineering, announced the new hire Saturday, and Crockford's Google+ page confirms the change.

Yahoo is losing only a single person among thousands of employees, but you can bet he's not one they like to see go. Crockford is a high-profile speaker in the tech world, a strong ally for the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) library of JavaScript tools, and a person who brings engineering cred.

Crockford is perhaps best known for an important role in … Read more

It's a good thing legal action is Mozilla's "last resort" for resolving its disagreement with Microsoft over bringing Firefox to the upcoming Windows RT, because it's likely a difficult antitrust case to make.

That's because Windows RT, the version of the operating system geared for devices using ARM processors, is a different beast than conventional Windows running on traditional x86 processors. Microsoft's present rules would hobble non-IE browsers on Windows RT, but the company's market power is with Windows on x86 chips.

ARM chips dominate today's smartphone and tablet devices running … Read more

Technically, Microsoft hasn't banned non-IE browsers in Windows RT, the forthcoming Windows 8 version for machines with ARM processors. But as Mozilla sees it, Microsoft may as well have.

Why? Because Microsoft permits only its own software to use a restricted set of Windows interfaces. This means Firefox and other browsers don't get access to the same application programming interfaces (APIs), which in turn means they don't get the same abilities and will effectively be crippled, said Mozilla spokesman and longtime participant Asa Dotzler.

"Without these APIs, it is not possible to build a modern Web … Read more

For the jury evaluating testimony by the cast of Oracle and Google in their ongoing legal slugfest, the blog post by former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz is one of the more prominent, and less technical, points of contention in the trial. In both the copyright and the current patent phase of the trial, the blog post has been central to Google's defense.

In his testimony, Schwartz stated that he had to grit his teeth, but saw no cause to sue Google over its use of the Java programming language in the Android mobile platform. Google's counsel played up … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Andy Rubin, Google's senior vice president of mobile, continued to defend the Internet giant's argument that Android engineers had no knowledge of Sun Microsystems patents in the Oracle v. Google trial here this morning.

As the founder of Android and leader of the unit at Google, Rubin has played a prominent part in this trial at the U.S. District Court of Northern California over the last few weeks, making several appearances before the 12-person jury.

After recalling Rubin yesterday afternoon as part of the plaintiff's case in the patents phase of the trial, Oracle attorney … Read more