Judge says Google failed to comply with order in patent case against Oracle

A federal judge on Monday said Google failed to comply with an order to submit a list of bloggers, writers and commenters who have covered issues related to its patent infringement battle against Oracle and might have been influenced by payments they received from the search company.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Google must submit a list by Aug. 24 that includes "all commenters known by Google to have received payments as consultants, contractors, vendors or employees." Alsup said Google does not need to disclose gifts to universities or advertising revenue received by commenters.

"Google suggests that it has paid so many commenters that it will be impossible to list them all," Alsup wrote in his order. "Please simply do your best but the impossible is not required. Oracle managed to do it."

Google and Oracle were ordered by Alsup on Aug. 7 to provide a list of bloggers, writers and authors who have commented on the patent suit and received money from either of the tech giants during the case. The filings were made public last Friday.

Both companies have denied paying commenters to write about their high-stakes patent battle. In its filing, Google listed nonprofits, universities, individuals and other organizations to which it has given contributions, but said it would be difficult to list them all.

Oracle noted that it hired Florian Mueller, author of the FOSS Patents blog, as a consultant "on competition-related matters," but did so after he started writing about the case.

"Oracle has disclosed that it retained a blogger as a consultant," Alsup wrote in the order. "Even though the payment was for consulting work, the payment might have influenced the blogger's reports on issues in the civil action.

"If a treatise author or blogger is paid by a litigant, should not that relationship be known?" Alsup continued. 

A Google spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Oracle has accused Google's Android mobile platform of infringing on patents and copyright that belonged to its Java programming language.

This post was updated at 11:03 p.m. to correct the spelling of Judge Alsup's name.