San Diego – When it comes to intellectual property litigation, it is somewhat common for judges to hear unreasonable demands and ridiculous claims from both sides.  Such is the case in an ongoing patent dispute between Google and Oracle.

Oracle’s original complaint alleges that Google’s Android technology infringes on the Java computer programming language patents that Oracle acquired from Sun Microsystems.  The judge however, rejected Oracle’s over-reaching claims because the patents in question “certainly do not cover all of Java or all of Android…It seems highly unlikely that Android derives its entire value from a small set of infringing features, given its breadth…The next report must apportion the total value between the specific infringing features versus the rest of the Android.”

Regardless of the judge’s ruling on Oracle’s claims, it appears that Google may be the one in the hot seat over an email between company engineers.  The email reads, in part:

“What we’ve actually been asked to do by Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome.  We’ve been over a bunch of these and think they all suck.  We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need.”

The email is a blow to Google’s defense that any infringement was unintentional.  Judge Alsup wrapped up a recent hearing with a warning to Google attorneys that if any willful infringement is discovered, there will be profound implications with a permanent injunction.