In the ongoing court battle between Google and Oracle, the jury has indicated that it may not be able to reach a unanimous decision on claims that Google infringed on Oracle copyrights in building the Android mobile operating system.
"What happens if we cannot reach unanimous decision and people are not budging?" a juror asked Judge William Alsup late on Thursday.
On Friday morning, Alsup told lawyers for Google and Oracle that he would accept a partial verdict from jury if all 12 members can't agree on a full verdict. "I'm not going to let this court go to waste," Alsup said. But he also said this was not his official ruling, indicating he could change his mind.
Oracle is suing Google for allegedly violating its copyrights and patents in building a new version of the Java platform for Android. In 2010, Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems, the company that built Java. Google's Dalvik virtual machine -- which runs applications on Android -- mimics the Java APIs, application programming interfaces used to create applications with the Java programming language.
The case came to trial on Apr. 16. Naturally, it has involved complex discussions about the natural of computer code, including APIs, which are essentially a way for two pieces of software to talk to each other. And the jury faces tough questions over the difference between infringement and what is regarded as the normal course of software development.
At the moment, the jury is trying to reach a verdict on Oracle's claims of copyright infringement. The case will then move into a new phase, where the court will address the software giant's patent claims.
On Thursday, lawyers for both Google and Oracle declined to say how they'd like to proceed if the jury is deadlocked on the copyright issue, saying they wanted to confer with their teams overnight. Judge Alsup then called the 12 jurors into the San Francisco courtroom and let them know he was wary of answering questions containing a "what if," even going so far as to say President Franklin Roosevelt is known for taking a similar stance.
"It may be a bit premature for you to panic and think you're not going to reach a verdict," Alsup said to the twelve. "This is not as simple as, 'Who ran a red light?'" In the end, he advised the jury to continue working hard and doing their best and should only worry about being deadlocked should it actually come to that.
There are four questions on the jury's verdict form, so it's possible that the jury could agree on some parts of the case but not others.
On Friday, Oracle argued that if the jury is deadlocked, the court should accept a partial verdict and the case should still proceed to the "patent phase" -- where the two sides will argue about whether Google infringed on two Oracle patents. But Google argued that previous case law suggests that if the jury can't rule on all the copyright questions, the case must be tried from scratch. That the sides would take these stances suggests they believe the jury has ruled against Google on at least one of the questions.
Judge Alsup then said that although he supports a partial decision, this is not his final ruling. The court should still wait for the official verdict from the jury before proceeding, he said, and he wanted more time to think about it anyway.
