Google endorses open-source activity around Android, but it looks like their developers “borrowed” a little too much from Sun’s Java code. Oracle, Sun’s owner, is already suing Google for seven infringed patents, but this adds further weight to their claim.
Florian Mueller from FOSSpatents made the discovery when digging around in Android’s code that six files in Android 2.2 and 3.0 were lifted from the Java source code, along with 37 files that had “proprietary/confidential” on them.
No doubt Oracle owes Mueller now, who says “it seems to me that Oracle has not even presented the tip of the iceberg in its amended complaint”, and went on to add “a copyright infringement is a copyright infringement, and if Google publishes code under a licence for which it was never made available by its rightful owner, that’s a serious legal problem.” [FOSSpatents via Electronista]