Story: Sun has betrayed us all

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In fact, under US current copyrigth Law, Sun had ZERO choice in the matter. the sttlement happend AFTER it was adjudged by a jury that Sun was GUILTY of infringing on Kodak's patents. So, Sun, which had more than 2 decades of many folks' dev work into Java ( I was reading of Java in Byte in 1984-1985 College academic year and after than until Byte Magazine folded and have followed it since with avid attention) "did the right thing under teh circumstances." Instead of allowing the trial to enter its PENALTY and DAMAGES stage, they settled with Sun for $92,000,000.00 USD before the date fro that to start came up as current. Sun had been to trial, HAD lost ths case, and thus was not caving as they settled for considerably less than Kodak sought.

No, I am not a Sun employee, but I do use things like OpenOffice and Mozilla that utilize Java 5 well. Adn frankly, had Sun not paid, a lot of devs would have had a lot fo rewriting to do and Sun could not have continued sponsoring those dev efforts to the degree it still does after the settlement.

Had Sun not gone to trial, they would in fact have been caving, but this was AFTER the fact finding part of the trial was complete that this happened. Doing this spared them LOTs of legal expense and court costs and possibly a large increase in penalty and damage adjudication fulfillment expenses. They settled bacasue they had in fact been essentially FOUND guilty and decided to seek a settlement good for both parties ratehr than have one imposed. Had they continued into the penalty and damages phase, the amount owed woudl have become fixed costs and NOT been negotiable.

US Law allows for negotiated settlements (between civil suit parties) between the fact finding part and the penalty and damages parts of many trials where the charges are civil and not criminal. It does NOT allow for a negotiation AFTER the penalties and damages parts of such trials. There is no way Sun could have had the adjudged penalties and damages reduced later, except by appeal. That costs a LOT. Sun did not have enough law on its side to consider appealing in a very serious manner, but I am certain it was discussed as a possible option.

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