Judge Orders Oracle To Pay Google $1 Million In Legal Fees

Suing Google over intellectual property and patent rights has cost Oracle $1 million in legal fees. US District Court Judge William Alsup denied Google’s request for $4 million before awarded the company a cool seven figures.

In his payment settlement, Judge Alsup said he also plans to take “no further action regarding the subject of payments by the litigants to commentators and journalists. ”

In writing about paid bloggers, Alsup said:

“No commentary has in any way influenced the Court’s orders and ruling herein save and except for any treatise or article expressly cited in an order or ruling.”

Oracle and Google both claimed that certain bloggers had been paid for their opinions during the lawsuit in order to sway public opinion.

In his ruling, Judge Alsup all but declared Google the winner, writing:

“Oracle initially sought six billion dollars in damages and injunctive relief but recovered nothing after nearly two years of litigation and six weeks of trial.”

The Java lawsuit that began earlier this year included a battle over Oracle’s Java programming code, technology the company owned after purchasing Sun Microsystems.

In asking for $4 million in legal fees, Google claimed the following expenses:

$2.9 million for organization of copied court-necessary documents.

$143,341 for transcript services.

$986,978 for compensation of the court-appointed experts.

Google’s massive costs come largely from 60 separate document production periods that spanned 20 million pages for 3.3 million requested documents on Oracles behalf.

Oracle is expected to contest the $1 million payment.

With public opinion largely swaying away from patent lawsuits and judges warning that the patent system is largely being abused, there is a good chance more multi-million legal fee orders will be awarded when company’s fail to prove their IP disputes are valid in a court of law.