Right, my question is why didn't Google know they were opening themselves up to this kind of suit? Could they possibly have known but gone ahead anyway? That would be crazy.
As far as Google, they deliberately wrote a new virtual machine to be certain they were not infringing. With the patent system we have today, the only way to avoid opening themselves up to this kind of suit is to stop writing software entirely.
Google isn't infringing on the patents and sure isn't violating the copyright. Oracle knows that a Texas jury won't understand the technical issues and hopes Google will settle to avoid the chance of losing billions over a bogus and ignorant verdict.
The outcome of a jury trial in a case like this is like flipping a coin. There won't be any hackers on the jury or else it'd be a five minute decision out of the jury room for Google.
I always assumed Google had done their legal homework before building Dalvik. If they truly did a thoroughly clean implementation and if they truly examined all the patent issues they could foresee, then this case would prove that nobody, no company at all, no matter how diligent, can safely write software without fear of infringing patents. That won't help Google in court, but they could help make the case against software patents in the U.S. Congress. My dearest hope.
