The next round of Oracle's ongoing copyright lawsuit against Google over Android will begin on May 9. And Oracle is going to try to convince the jury that Google owes it $8.8 billion, reports James Niccolai at IDG News Service.
This comes from court documents filed in the case, Niccolai reports, and it confirms what Business Insider previously learned about Oracle's plans to ask for billions in damages.
Oracle and Google have been duking it out in court for years over Android's use of certain parts of Java, a programming language acquired by Oracle when it bought Java's creator, Sun Microsystems, in 2009.
This new jury trial will decide whether Google had the right to use the code for free or if Google owes Oracle damages and how much. Google has been arguing that its use of Java is covered by fair use, which allows limited copying, meaning that it doesn't owe Oracle any damages.
Oracle is justifying the damages claim with two arguments. It plans to reveal information about how much Google is profiting from Android, to show that it's a multibillion-dollar business for Google, which doesn't report Android-related revenue.
And Oracle also intends to argue that Java once had a fledgling mobile operating-system business and that Android should be blamed for its failure to become a multibillion-dollar business.
But to put that $8.8 billion in context, that's more than what Oracle paid for all of Sun Microsystems, which was a big tech company at the time that made computers, servers, the chips that run these devices, and Java, among other things. Oracle paid $7.4 billion for Sun, but it cost Oracle more like $5.4 billion if you subtract Sun's cash on hand.
Or compare the damages number to this: Oracle brought in $9.01 billion in revenue for all of its products combined last quarter.
But just because Oracle asks, that doesn't mean the damages will stick. Oracle originally sued Google for $6 billion in 2011 over Android, but the judge at that time rejected the amount as being far too high.
And there's still a chance that the jury will side with Google and not award Oracle significant damages at all.
Oracle declined to comment for this story.
This story originally reported that Oracle would demand $9.3 billion but we have since learned that the figure is closer to $8.8 and the story has been updated to reflect the change.
