Not sure if I'm more amazed that Oracle thought deleting the evidence from their website would stop non other than Google from finding it. Or if I'm more amazed that it actually worked for so long.

How exactly does this effect the current state of the trial? When will Google have an opportunity to show this, and on what context? I thought we were just waiting for the judge to finish making up his mind and give his verdict. Is that correct?

> Not sure if I'm more amazed that Oracle thought deleting the evidence from their website would stop non other than Google from finding it.

That's not the first time they do this, they deleted Jonathan Schwartz' entire blog in the days that followed the acquisition.

They were certainly right to think that this blog would hurt their case, but they obviously didn't realize that Schwartz' testimony itself would align with Google.

Fun times.

> How exactly does this effect the current state of the trial?

Probably not much, since I don't think there's something like "fair use" of patents. Either you infringe, or you don't.

> I thought we were just waiting for the judge to finish making up his mind and give his verdict. Is that correct?

Well, the trial is three phases: copyright, patents and damages. The jury is now deliberating on phase 2, patents. If they find that Google infringed one or both of the patents in question, there will be a phase 3 that assess the damage. I don't know if this position paper has any place in phase 3, but at least it's a possibility.

It seems like Groklaw has this all backwards. Android does not run Java.

So Sun's position would be that software patents would be acceptable in this case because Android is not interoperable with Java not trying to be.

Android doesn't run Java, but still a big part of the trial was about some Java APIs used in Android that allow some bits of compatibility.

That's a very interesting point!

That said, it's not quite as cut and dry, given that API compatibility goes a long way.

The patents under dispute have absolutely no relevance to the API. Regardless of whether or not they are valid/justified/infringed by Google, they are not required to make any software that's interopable with Java. Groklaw, as usual, simply tries to flaunt whatever "incriminating" evidence it can find against Oracle. Groklaw's analysis is anything but reliable as far as this case is concerned.