BoscoH

Sun’s public, corporate posturing on the “open source” nature of Java had considerable meaning to the jury, and likely will to the judge on the API question.

Sun lost control of Java. But that’s what inevitably happens when you use an open source strategy to grow an ecosystem. As a practical matter, you have to make that trade.

Oracle then came in and tried to reassert control over something that Sun had quite explicitly relinquished over the course of more than a decade. When Oracle acquired Sun, it fumbled the Java ball several times. I bet if they had worked to provide real value to Google instead of injecting uncertainty into the Java community by trying to monetize uses that Sun had already conceded, they might have actually done some business.

Basically, what this means is that Facebook got a fair valuation and maximized the capital it could raise, while all the second handers that traditionally gravy train off these deals didn’t get anything on day one and are going to have to do a little thinking and work to see if they want to play on Monday.

I figure they’ll get punished in the short term for not sharing the immediate wealth with the greedy, entitled bankers. But ultimately, they just have to make their quarterly numbers because those are what will set the price of FB from the first quarterly report forward.

We’re never going to get rid of patents. At the same time, we’re never going to put the patent war genie back in the bottle. The thing that was never contemplated when the founders wrote the Constitution and numerous Congresses wrote the laws was how a company like Apple could cost-shift enforcement of its rights on a massive scale to the government, simply by refusing to license.

Were Apple forced to license its patent at some pre-determined fee, we don’t have this silly kludge, and we don’t have the government wasting our money enforcing it. A proposal I like is where an applicant declare a value of his invention and, upon grant of the patent, pay a percentage of that value as a grant fee. Any party or combination of parties would be free to pay the value to the holder to free up the patent. So let’s say the grant fee is 1%. Apple sees this silly feature as worth $1B. Then Apple pays $10M to the Treasury when the patent is granted. HTC and Samsung and Google might get together and pay Apple $1B to free the patent. Apple has to accept the money and the patent is now void.