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Next up for Oracle v. Google -- the US Supreme Court?
AppId is over the quota
Google petitions the highest court in the country to overturn a previous appeals court ruling favoring Oracle, which in itself overturned a mixed bag of earlier district court rulings.
Oracle sued Google in 2010, alleging that Google's use of 37 Java APIs in its mobile OS constituted patent and copyright infringement. CNET
The United States Supreme Court term opened on Monday, and one of the most prominent patent battles in recent memory could end up on the docket in the near future.
That would be the case of Oracle v. Google, which first launched back in 2011 and seems to have no end in sight. This, presumably, would be the end of the road if the Supreme Court decides to hear the case or not.
Google has petitioned the highest court in the country to overturn a previous appeals court ruling in May favoring Oracle, which in itself overturned a mixed bag of district court rulings back in 2012 that primarily sided with Google.
To recall, Oracle initially sued Google over copyright and patent infringement allegations related to the implementation of the Java programming language on Google's Android mobile operating system. Oracle obtained the rights to Java through its 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems.
Oracle argues that Google willingly infringed upon its intellectual property without a license. Google insists that it didn't need a license under fair use laws for the open-source software.
Since then, the tech world and many federal courts have played witness to a long, drawn out legal war involving the aforementioned back-and-forth decisions, constantly changing assessments and assignments of legal fees and damages, and a who's-who of Silicon Valley brought into testify.
The most recent ruling, issued by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, found parts of the code were in fact allowed to be protected by copyright law. That gave the nod to Oracle -- contrary to what was decided by a jury at the US District Court of the Northern District of California in San Francisco two years ago.
For now, the case will continue to hang in the balance. A response from the Supreme Court isn't due until November 7.
This story originally appeared as "Oracle v. Google could end up in the U.S. Supreme Court" on ZDNet.
Rachel King Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet, SmartPlanet, and CNET. She is based in San Francisco. See full bio Real-time, real-world captioning comes to Google Glass
AppId is over the quota
A new app for Google Glass captions conversations in real-time.
Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET
Google Glass is fitted with a microphone and installed with speech-recognition software, which allows the wearer to talk to the device to give it instructions. This software has been refined to a point where it is now reasonable to expect very few errors -- but what Google Glass is not so good at is picking up sounds from farther away.
The wearable head-up display's potential for the hearing impaired, though, did not go unnoticed by a team of researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology. They found a way to circumvent the limitation's of Glass' microphone to create an app that captions conversations in real-time.
Captioning on Glass adds an Android smartphone to the mix. The speaker talks directly into the smartphone's microphone; the free CoG Android app translates the speech into text using Google's own speech recognition software and sends it to the free Captioning on Glass Glassware.
The app was developed by the team when School of Interactive Computing Professor Jim Foley found he was having trouble hearing -- and thought that Google Glass might be able to help.
"This system allows wearers like me to focus on the speaker's lips and facial gestures," Professor Foley said. "If hard-of-hearing people understand the speech, the conversation can continue immediately without waiting for the caption. However, if I miss a word, I can glance at the transcription, get the word or two I need and get back into the conversation."
Although the added smartphone might seem unwieldy to some, the project's leader, Professor Thad Starner, said that it was actually helpful in that holding a physical object made people think more carefully about what they were saying and how, reducing the number of speech disfluencies. He also noted that it was far superior than relying on the Google Glass microphone in terms of sound quality.
"Glass has its own microphone, but it's designed for the wearer," Professor Starner said. "The mobile phone puts a microphone directly next to the speaker's mouth, reducing background noise and helping to eliminate errors."
The team is working on a similar app designed to translate spoken language using an Android app on a smartphone, sending the translation to Google Glass. So far, the project has two-way translations for English, Spanish, French, Russian, Korean and Japanese. This app will be launched in the near future.
"For both uses, the person wearing Glass has to hand their smartphone to someone else to begin a conversation," said Professor Starner. "It's not ideal for strangers, but we designed the program to be used among friends, trusted acquaintances or while making purchases."
You can grab Captioning on Glass for Android on Google Play, and Captioning on Glass for Google Glass from the MyGlass marketplace.
Michelle Starr Michelle Starr is the tiger force at the core of all things. She also writes about cool stuff and apps as CNET Australia's Crave editor. But mostly the tiger force thing. See full bio Celebs threaten to sue Google over response to nude image hack
The attorney for the celebrities claims the search giant did not "act expeditiously and responsibly to remove the images."
Google is next in line to face the wrath of celebrities that were victims of last month's nude image hacking scandal.
In a broad indictment of the search giant, Martin Singer, an attorney at Lavely & Singer in Los Angeles, said that Google's conduct was "despicable [and] reprehensible" when, his clients believe, the company did not "act expeditiously and responsibly to remove" images stolen in a broad celebrity hack of Apple iCloud accounts. Singer is representing "over a dozen female celebrities, actresses, models, and athletes" whose images were stolen from their iCloud accounts.
"Google is making millions and profiting from the victimization of women," the attorney wrote in a letter to Google's top executives, including CEO Larry Page and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. "As a result of your blatantly unethical behavior, Google is expected to significant liability and both compensatory and punitive damages that could well exceed $100 million."
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last month, several nude images of celebrities were posted to image-based bulletin board 4chan. The images were apparently taken from iCloud accounts owned by actress Jennifer Lawrence, model Kate Upton, recording artist Ariana Grande and others. Before long, the images quickly spread across the Internet and hit both search engines and social media.
Most major websites, including Google, acted to remove the images from their sites. Google, the attorney for the celebrities claimed, was less-than-expeditious in removing the images. In September, The Hollywood Reporter said that 51 percent of the URLs containing the nude images were scrubbed from Google's search results. As of this writing, CNET was able to find some of the nude images on Google's Image search, though they were few and far between.
In the letter written to Google, the attorney said takedown notices were sent to Google four weeks ago, but the nude images can still be accessed on Google, as well at its other services, YouTube and Blogspot.
"This is unconscionable, especially for a company that boasts that its conduct should be 'measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct,'" the attorney wrote. He went on to laud Twitter for "immediately removing the images and suspending the offending user accounts."
The letter to Google appears at this point to simply be a warning shot, but the attorney left open the possibility of the celebrities suing Google. The letter ended with three demands, telling Google to: remove the images from its sites, terminate user accounts that are hosting the images and remove accounts on Blogspot that are displaying the photos. The attorney also asked for data preservation on all alleged offenders for possible litigation at a later time.
"The seriousness of this matter cannot be overstated," Singer said. "If Google continues to thumb its nost at my clients' rights -- and continues to both allow and facilitate the further victimization of these women -- and disregards the demands of this letter, it does so as its own peril."
(Via Hollywood Reporter)
Don Reisinger Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has covered everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Besides his work with CNET, Don's work has been featured in a variety of other publications including PC World and a host of Ziff-Davis publications. See full bio