5 ms·

Google Files Bill of Costs for Oracle to Pay - $4,030,669

102 points by lightspot 14y ago

dmix 14y ago
When I was a kid, I read comics or heard jokes where the punchline was about everyones unanimous hatred for lawyers, I was always a bit confused. But witnessing the last few yrs in the tech industry (in addition to politics and divorce law), it's become very apparent to me why thats the case.
- BadassFractal 14y ago
  I still don't see how the lawyers are the bad guys here. The company knows that the country's laws might allow it to weaken the competition. It wants to avail itself of that option. The laywers are just the executors of that action, the messengers if you will. They're certainly happy to make a buck from the process, but unless they're the ones to actually create the laws and keep them in place despite their ridiculousness, they are not exactly to blame.
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    They benefit from the current situation and their colleagues write the laws, so I don't imagine we'll see hordes of lawyers clamoring to change the status quo any time soon.
  - zdw 14y ago
    The problem is money. Large companies can use lawyers to get things like special taxation benefits ("if we build our factory here, can we get a tax break?") or to stamp out competition from smaller companies through patent lawsuits, etc. Saying that lawyers who participate in such actions is neutral is like saying that the tobacco companies are neutral with regards to cancer caused by smoking. You can't have a system without it's facilitators. That said, I know and work with a whole lot of very nice lawyers who, to my knowledge, aren't scummy.
    - Cushman 14y ago
      If the problem is money, then why go after the lawyers? Why not the accountants who finance the company? Or the HR managers who organize it? Or the contractors who will be putting that factory up, or, hell, the blue-collar guys who will eventually wind up staffing it? They're all just hard-working folks trying to make a living. They work for the corporations because the corporations have the money they need. If someone else had the money, they'd work for them instead. The only facilitator here is capital.
  - trobertson 14y ago
    (Over) Simplified: It's primarily lawyers (or at least, law school graduates) that make the laws, and they are also the ones profiting from ridiculous cases. It's up to lawyers to fix the mess that the lawyers made, that the lawyers are profiting from. Obviously, only lawyers are happy with the situation. As I said, this is a simplification. But it is too close to the truth for most people, and so most people dislike lawyers for "screwing things up".
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    > "they are not exactly to blame." Oh hell naw. If someone leaves their car unlocked sitting by the curb with the keys in the ignition, is it right to steal it? The fact that someone has (stupidly or otherwise) created a situation that is easy to take advantage of in no way excuses the person that exploits it. The fact that we have creating a patent and copyright law situation that borders on the absurd is one thing, people actively seeking to profit from this sorry state of affairs are as guilty as they come.
    - prodigal_erik 14y ago
      It's an adversarial system, though. For every legal team trying to exploit the flaws in our system, there's another trying to stop them from doing so. They aren't all bad actors. What I can't understand is why billing rates haven't plummeted due to the glut of law school grads they keep talking about. It's not as if the bar associations have kept that many off the market.
    - edanm 14y ago
      I think the point is that it is Oracle trying to exploit the situation. Not their lawyers.
- noonespecial 14y ago
  Here's a viewpoint that's even more scary than a bunch of villainous lawyers out to take advantage of the poor sheeple: The lawyers, the accountants, the CEO's, even judges and juries are just out working hard, trying the best they can to get along in life. None of them are particularly scummy. The rottenness is just an emergent property. Lawyers just happen to live on the fault-lines of the tectonic plates of greed and self interest.
  - nazgulnarsil 14y ago
    It isn't just an emergent property. When you undermine contract law and private property rights the whole system turns to shit. Libertarians complain loudly about things like guns and drugs, but the erosion of the backbone of an economy is a much more insidious problem.
    - roguecoder 14y ago
      As long as patents are part of the problem the solution is not more property rights.
SquareWheel 14y ago
What are the chances that they will actually receive this?
- tokenadult 14y ago
  What are the chances that they will actually receive this? An order of the court will determine the final award of costs. Both sides get to argue with the court about what's a reasonable award, but the judge decides, and I can't imagine that Oracle wouldn't follow the court's order (as it can well afford to do). Probably Google is initially asking for far more than it actually expects to get after the judge reviews the bill of costs.
jswanson 14y ago
Whatever the result, the lawyers always win. This is pocket change for Oracle. The real set back to them is the result of the case. And though it's good to see the aggressor in one of these lawsuits actually lose, it's saddening to think that if Oracle or a pure patent troll went after a company without 4 million to pay for a defensive suit, they would have won.
- skystorm 14y ago
  Note that this does not actually include the attorneys' fees, though.
nwmcsween 14y ago
It's nice to see Oracle reinventing it self into SCO
- ComputerGuru 14y ago
  It hasn't, though. Larry Ellison has shown time and time again that Oracle is just about the bottom dollar. SCO was just a patent troll, but in Ellison's Oracle, patent trolling/litigation is just another "wing" of the business of making big bucks. Oracle did the math and thought it would be worth the risk/investment of taking this all the way in anticipation of a possible payout on the scale of billions of dollars, and it didn't pan out. That's what makes this all the more annoying: this isn't their core business model, they're not SCO, but they choose to pursue this anyway.
  - taligent 14y ago
    I don't think you know much about Oracle. Aggressively defending their assets through the courts is something Oracle has a long, long history of. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they lose. But they almost never just let things slide. Pretty sure Larry is wearing his kimono with swords by his side when he's making the decision to "go to war".
andyjsong 14y ago
Man... I gotta get back into economic consulting... $986,978 in expert witness fees.
- quink 14y ago
  That's probably one percent of the total lawyering costs. Maybe get into that :P
  - andyjsong 14y ago
    >That's probably one percent of the total lawyering costs. Maybe get into that :P I don't think you know how much expert witnesses charge and what they do.
grellas 14y ago
The cost bill filed by Google underscores the intensity of this case and shows that we caught only surface glimpses of what surely were day-to-day firefights keeping the lawyers and their minions going round-the-clock for an intense year's worth of fighting. A "cost bill" is not a bill for the attorneys' fees incurred in a case. Under U.S. rules, the parties bear their own legal fees in most cases (and that is the case here). But federal court rules do permit a prevailing party to recover from the losing party necessary costs incurred in dealing with document production and similar matters in the litigation. The out-of-pocket bill here (not including attorneys' fees) for Google to filter through 97 million documents and to produce just over 3 million of them after careful assessment and screening: about $2.9 million (mostly paid to electronic discovery service providers, who surely found full-time employment in this case during this past year). The bulk of the remaining bill for costs consists of nearly $1 million paid to expert witnesses for their assistance in helping to prepare and present Google's case. In a case like this, Google's attorneys' fees had to run at least $10 million per month, at least during the intense phases of the case. I would estimate, then, that total attorneys' fees in the case easily exceeded $100 million and may well have done so for Google alone. Big Law may be in the doldrums today in general but a case like this clearly offers a big payday. The law firms here were all exemplary and undoubtedly earned it. Still, the cost is staggering to contemplate for the casual outside observer.
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  They did not earn it. Lawyers charge exorbitant prices because they can -- they have you by the balls, and you don't really have an option not to pay them -- not because their services are actually worth $100 million+. I've admired your posts for years here on HN, but it's not just staggering to a "casual observer"; it's staggering to anyone with a sense of decency and propriety.
  - Cushman 14y ago
    Out of curiosity, how much would you bid to reproduce some tens of millions of pages of documents in such a way that you would be willing to testify before a judge that every single one was true and accurate? (Considering that the judge will not take your word for it, how much should you set aside to pay someone else to go through it all and check your work?)
mtgx 14y ago
I can't imagine Oracle being too bothered by the sum itself, but it must be pretty embarrassing for them to be the aggressors in this case, and ask for billions in the beginning from Google, then to find out that they could only get like $35 million at most, even if they do win, and finally to lose the case, and themselves be the ones paying millions to Google.

102 points by lightspot 14y ago

dmix 14y ago

When I was a kid, I read comics or heard jokes where the punchline was about everyones unanimous hatred for lawyers, I was always a bit confused. But witnessing the last few yrs in the tech industry (in addition to politics and divorce law), it's become very apparent to me why thats the case.

BadassFractal 14y ago
I still don't see how the lawyers are the bad guys here. The company knows that the country's laws might allow it to weaken the competition. It wants to avail itself of that option. The laywers are just the executors of that action, the messengers if you will. They're certainly happy to make a buck from the process, but unless they're the ones to actually create the laws and keep them in place despite their ridiculousness, they are not exactly to blame.
- nitrogen 14y ago
  They benefit from the current situation and their colleagues write the laws, so I don't imagine we'll see hordes of lawyers clamoring to change the status quo any time soon.
- zdw 14y ago
  The problem is money. Large companies can use lawyers to get things like special taxation benefits ("if we build our factory here, can we get a tax break?") or to stamp out competition from smaller companies through patent lawsuits, etc. Saying that lawyers who participate in such actions is neutral is like saying that the tobacco companies are neutral with regards to cancer caused by smoking. You can't have a system without it's facilitators. That said, I know and work with a whole lot of very nice lawyers who, to my knowledge, aren't scummy.
  - Cushman 14y ago
    If the problem is money, then why go after the lawyers? Why not the accountants who finance the company? Or the HR managers who organize it? Or the contractors who will be putting that factory up, or, hell, the blue-collar guys who will eventually wind up staffing it? They're all just hard-working folks trying to make a living. They work for the corporations because the corporations have the money they need. If someone else had the money, they'd work for them instead. The only facilitator here is capital.
- trobertson 14y ago
  (Over) Simplified: It's primarily lawyers (or at least, law school graduates) that make the laws, and they are also the ones profiting from ridiculous cases. It's up to lawyers to fix the mess that the lawyers made, that the lawyers are profiting from. Obviously, only lawyers are happy with the situation. As I said, this is a simplification. But it is too close to the truth for most people, and so most people dislike lawyers for "screwing things up".
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "they are not exactly to blame." Oh hell naw. If someone leaves their car unlocked sitting by the curb with the keys in the ignition, is it right to steal it? The fact that someone has (stupidly or otherwise) created a situation that is easy to take advantage of in no way excuses the person that exploits it. The fact that we have creating a patent and copyright law situation that borders on the absurd is one thing, people actively seeking to profit from this sorry state of affairs are as guilty as they come.
  - prodigal_erik 14y ago
    It's an adversarial system, though. For every legal team trying to exploit the flaws in our system, there's another trying to stop them from doing so. They aren't all bad actors. What I can't understand is why billing rates haven't plummeted due to the glut of law school grads they keep talking about. It's not as if the bar associations have kept that many off the market.
  - edanm 14y ago
    I think the point is that it is Oracle trying to exploit the situation. Not their lawyers.
noonespecial 14y ago
Here's a viewpoint that's even more scary than a bunch of villainous lawyers out to take advantage of the poor sheeple: The lawyers, the accountants, the CEO's, even judges and juries are just out working hard, trying the best they can to get along in life. None of them are particularly scummy. The rottenness is just an emergent property. Lawyers just happen to live on the fault-lines of the tectonic plates of greed and self interest.
- nazgulnarsil 14y ago
  It isn't just an emergent property. When you undermine contract law and private property rights the whole system turns to shit. Libertarians complain loudly about things like guns and drugs, but the erosion of the backbone of an economy is a much more insidious problem.
  - roguecoder 14y ago
    As long as patents are part of the problem the solution is not more property rights.

SquareWheel 14y ago

What are the chances that they will actually receive this?

tokenadult 14y ago
What are the chances that they will actually receive this? An order of the court will determine the final award of costs. Both sides get to argue with the court about what's a reasonable award, but the judge decides, and I can't imagine that Oracle wouldn't follow the court's order (as it can well afford to do). Probably Google is initially asking for far more than it actually expects to get after the judge reviews the bill of costs.

jswanson 14y ago

Whatever the result, the lawyers always win. This is pocket change for Oracle. The real set back to them is the result of the case. And though it's good to see the aggressor in one of these lawsuits actually lose, it's saddening to think that if Oracle or a pure patent troll went after a company without 4 million to pay for a defensive suit, they would have won.

skystorm 14y ago
Note that this does not actually include the attorneys' fees, though.

nwmcsween 14y ago

It's nice to see Oracle reinventing it self into SCO

ComputerGuru 14y ago
It hasn't, though. Larry Ellison has shown time and time again that Oracle is just about the bottom dollar. SCO was just a patent troll, but in Ellison's Oracle, patent trolling/litigation is just another "wing" of the business of making big bucks. Oracle did the math and thought it would be worth the risk/investment of taking this all the way in anticipation of a possible payout on the scale of billions of dollars, and it didn't pan out. That's what makes this all the more annoying: this isn't their core business model, they're not SCO, but they choose to pursue this anyway.
- taligent 14y ago
  I don't think you know much about Oracle. Aggressively defending their assets through the courts is something Oracle has a long, long history of. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they lose. But they almost never just let things slide. Pretty sure Larry is wearing his kimono with swords by his side when he's making the decision to "go to war".

andyjsong 14y ago

Man... I gotta get back into economic consulting... $986,978 in expert witness fees.

quink 14y ago
That's probably one percent of the total lawyering costs. Maybe get into that :P
- andyjsong 14y ago
  >That's probably one percent of the total lawyering costs. Maybe get into that :P I don't think you know how much expert witnesses charge and what they do.

grellas 14y ago

The cost bill filed by Google underscores the intensity of this case and shows that we caught only surface glimpses of what surely were day-to-day firefights keeping the lawyers and their minions going round-the-clock for an intense year's worth of fighting. A "cost bill" is not a bill for the attorneys' fees incurred in a case. Under U.S. rules, the parties bear their own legal fees in most cases (and that is the case here). But federal court rules do permit a prevailing party to recover from the losing party necessary costs incurred in dealing with document production and similar matters in the litigation. The out-of-pocket bill here (not including attorneys' fees) for Google to filter through 97 million documents and to produce just over 3 million of them after careful assessment and screening: about $2.9 million (mostly paid to electronic discovery service providers, who surely found full-time employment in this case during this past year). The bulk of the remaining bill for costs consists of nearly $1 million paid to expert witnesses for their assistance in helping to prepare and present Google's case. In a case like this, Google's attorneys' fees had to run at least $10 million per month, at least during the intense phases of the case. I would estimate, then, that total attorneys' fees in the case easily exceeded $100 million and may well have done so for Google alone. Big Law may be in the doldrums today in general but a case like this clearly offers a big payday. The law firms here were all exemplary and undoubtedly earned it. Still, the cost is staggering to contemplate for the casual outside observer.

cookiecaper 14y ago
They did not earn it. Lawyers charge exorbitant prices because they can -- they have you by the balls, and you don't really have an option not to pay them -- not because their services are actually worth $100 million+. I've admired your posts for years here on HN, but it's not just staggering to a "casual observer"; it's staggering to anyone with a sense of decency and propriety.
- Cushman 14y ago
  Out of curiosity, how much would you bid to reproduce some tens of millions of pages of documents in such a way that you would be willing to testify before a judge that every single one was true and accurate? (Considering that the judge will not take your word for it, how much should you set aside to pay someone else to go through it all and check your work?)

mtgx 14y ago

I can't imagine Oracle being too bothered by the sum itself, but it must be pretty embarrassing for them to be the aggressors in this case, and ask for billions in the beginning from Google, then to find out that they could only get like $35 million at most, even if they do win, and finally to lose the case, and themselves be the ones paying millions to Google.