Google renews bid to sanction Oracle for leaking search deals with Apple

Google is once again seeking sanctions against a lawyer for Oracle accused of violating a court protective order by revealing Google's massive annual payments to Apple for iPhone search bar privileges.

"Google and third party Apple were harmed by Oracle's counsel's disclosure regarding the terms of a significant and confidential commercial agreement," according to a June 29 letter to the court seen by Fortune. Google originally tried to pursue sanctions in January, but U.S. District Judge William Alsup said he would only consider them at the end of the Oracle v. Google trial.

That trial — over whether the use of Java APIs in Android amounted to fair use — concluded in late May in Google's favor, although Oracle is working to appeal.

Oracle is taking the side the lawyer, Annette Hurst, who works for an outside firm called Orrick. Though it has yet to submit a formal response, an Oracle statement emailed to Fortune indicates that the company will oppose Google's "frivolous" motion, claimed to be "premised on oral arguments in open court that were a response to Google's misrepresentations."

If Google succeeds, Hurst and Oracle could both be fined for contempt of court.

During the trial, Hurst exposed the fact that Google paid Apple $1 billion in 2014 alone, and splits up to 34 percent of the revenue it gets from iPhone searches. Prior to then that data was a closely-guarded secret.

21 Comments

jbdragon 2312 comments · 10 Years

About 8 years ago

I'm all for Google forking out all that money to Apple for searches. My default setting is DuckDuckGo!!!. I don't see how Oracle has a case with Google using api's? The judge in this case learned quite well what was going on and made the right call. You can't sue a person or company over open api's being used.

sockrolid 2789 comments · 14 Years

Seeking sanctions -> sanctimonious?
Or is it just sour grapes?

volcan 1799 comments · 10 Years

jbdragon said:

You can't sue a person or company over open api's being used.

In your opinion perhaps, but open source and free does not necessarily mean that the APIs are fair use and not copywritable, which is probably why it is going back to court. For example I could get a copy of Red Hat Linux and call it the Volcan operating system and redistribute it. I don't think that would be considered fair use and Linus would probably take exception to it and rightly so. Although that being said, it is hard to believe he reverse engineered Linux legitimately. As far as I could see when it first came out, it looked exactly like Solaris which isn't open source. All the files, applications and configurations were identical. In the case of Oracle vs. Google, it is Google who has to prove that the APIs are fair use and not copywritable, not the other way around.

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

Wait. What? Google has to pay for Apple for being the default search engine choice on iOS devices? Is that not anti-competitive? Shouldn’t Google be allowed on iOS without paying Apple? Isn’t that exactly what Spotify wants? Exposure on iOS devices without having to cough up a percentage of the take. The ability to rake in subscription fees from a potential billion customers but Apple gets nada or maybe a paltry one-time fee of a few pennies.

Could someone from the “Apple is an evil monopoly” brigade explain this to me? I mean Android rules the world, right? Why would Google agree to this behavior by the evil, rotten Apple?

gregg thurman 456 comments · 16 Years

lkrupp said:

Wait. What? Google has to pay for Apple for being the default search engine choice on iOS devices? Is that not anti-competitive? Shouldn’t Google be allowed on iOS without paying Apple? Isn’t that exactly what Spotify wants? Exposure on iOS devices without having to cough up a percentage of the take. The ability to rake in subscription fees from a potential billion customers but Apple gets nada or maybe a paltry one-time fee of a few pennies.

Could someone from the “Apple is an evil monopoly” brigade explain this to me? I mean Android rules the world, right? Why would Google agree to this behavior by the evil, rotten Apple?

I'll bet Elizabeth Warren has blocked Spotify's phone number, and is refusing to return Spotify's campaign contribution.