Oracle Used A Ridiculous Argument In Its Most Recent Filing Against Google

Oracle lost its fight last year when a jury found Android didn't infringe Oracle's patents.

Well, Oracle is at it again.

But if they want to win this time around, the company better come up with a more convincing argument.

Oracle recently filed an appeal brief with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and this is what it decided to go with for its introductory arguments (document courtesy of Groklaw):

Ann Droid wants to publish a bestseller. So she sits down with an advance copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—the fifth book—and proceeds to transcribe. She verbatim copies all the chapter titles—from Chapter 1 (“Dudley Demented”) to Chapter 38 (“The Second War Begins”). She copies verbatim the topic sentences of each paragraph, starting from the first (highly descriptive) one and continuing, in order, to the last, simple one (“Harry nodded.”). She then paraphrases the rest of each paragraph. She rushes the competing version to press before the original under the title: Ann Droid’s Harry Potter 5.0. The knockoff flies off the shelves. J.K. Rowling sues for copyright infringement. Ann’s defenses: “But I wrote most of the words from scratch. Besides, this was fair use, because I copied only the portions necessary to tap into the Harry Potter fan base.”

Obviously, the defenses would fail.

There's one big problem with this argument, as Groklaw points out (emphasis ours).

"Software is not a novel. The copyright rules are not identical. Duh."

Duh, indeed.