Google makes second attempt to comply with order in patent case against Oracle

Google has made its second attempt to comply with a federal judge's order to submit a list of bloggers and commenters who have written about issues related to its patent infringement lawsuit against Oracle and could have been influenced by payments from the search company.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered Google and Oracle earlier this month to provide a list of bloggers, writers and authors who have commented on their patent suit and have also received money from either of the tech giants. Last week Alsup said Google failed to comply with his earlier order and gave the search company a few extra days to satisfy the request.

In its filing, Google's attorneys maintained that the company and its lawyers have not paid any author, blogger, journalist or commentator to report on any issues regarding the case. Google submitted the filing last Friday, and for the most part, it does not contain any major surprises. 

"Google did not pay for comments from any of the commenters listed in this disclosure," Google attorneys wrote. "Nor did Google cite or rely on any of these commenters in its briefing in this case."

Google listed Stanford Law Professor Mark Lemley as an outside counsel to the company, but only for cases outside of the Oracle suit. The search company also noted that Durie Tangri, the San Francisco-based law firm where Lemley is a partner, provides outside counsel to the company on issues unrelated to the Oracle case. Lemley has commented about the patent suit in news articles and has also tweeted about it a couple of times from his personal Twitter account, according to the filing. 

Google also noted that Timothy Lee, a writer for the tech blog Ars Technica, worked as an engineering intern for Google at the end of 2010 before he joined the blog's editorial staff. The search company said Lee's engineering internship ended shortly after Oracle filed the patent suit in 2010 and noted that he didn't start writing about the case until the following year. 

The search company also attempted to set the record straight on its financial relationships with several of the nonprofit advocacy groups it donates to.

In its filing, Google defended the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and its chief executive, Ed Black. Oracle had "falsely" suggested that Black was "under the influence" of the search company's money when he wrote a column stating that software application programming interfaces (APIs) cannot be copyrightable, Google's attorneys wrote.

The search company argued that Black has held that belief long before Oracle filed its suit, and CCIA's position on APIs dates back to the 1990s.

Google also acknowledged that some staffers for various nonprofit groups to which it donates — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and the Competitive Enterprise Institute — have commented on the Oracle suit in blog posts. However, Google noted that it has given money to these organizations for years, even before Oracle filed its complaint.

Oracle and Google have both denied that they paid commenters to write about their high-stakes patent battle. Notably, Oracle revealed in its filing that it hired Florian Mueller, author of the FOSS Patents blog, as a consultant on competition matters, but did so after he started writing about the case.

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