Oracle and Alphabet's Google failed to arrive at a settlement on the long-running copyright dispute over the Android operating system. According to the court, the case may likely proceed to trial.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Oracel CEO Safra Catz, together with other company executives, met for a six-hour meeting on Friday in an attempt to settle the suit, Business Insider reported.
Oracle brought the lawsuit against Google to court in 2012. Oracle alleged that Google owes them for using the Java programming language to design the Android operating system. Oracle, which owns the copyright for Java, is demanding $8.8 billion in damages. The jury reached a deadlock due to Google's "fair use" defense, in which the clause reportedly states that use of APIs "permits copying under limited circumstnaces."
In its previous filing, Google strongly opposed Oracle's assessment. The company argued that Dr. James Kearl, the court-appointed damages expert, crunched the numbers based largely on Oracle's theory on how to calculate the amount Google at owed.
The calculation was based on the profit Google generated from Android, which has been declared in public. Google criticized Kearl's findings as "ungrounded in the facts" and based on "improper analytical frameworks."
According to NASDAQ, Google's own damage experts have quote a much lower figure that is around $100 million.
"After an earlier run at settling this case failed, the court observed that some cases just need to be tried," said U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal, as quoted by Fortune. "This case apparently needs to be tried twice."
The parties' failure to reach a settlement effectively moves the case to trial, which will most likely take place in May. A jury will then decide whether Google had the right to use Oracle's Java programming language for free or if Oracle's demand for damages is meritorious.
The Java programming language was first developed in the 1990s by Sun Microsystems. The company was taken over by Oracle in 2010.
