Google to seek sanctions against Oracle's attorney in Oracle vs Google case

tech2 News StaffJul 05, 2016 16:56:04 IST

The whole Oracle vs Google trial has been a disaster for Oracle from the start. Now that the trial is done and dusted with however (Oracle still plans to appeal though), Google is going forward with its intentions to request sanctions against Oracle’s law firm (Orrick, Sutcliffe & Herrington) and specifically, Annette Hurst, Oracle’s attorney. Hurst is on the board of directors at Orrick, Sutcliffe & Herrington.

Bloomberg reports that when the case was still being heard January, Hurst revealed confidential financial information and details of a confidential revenue sharing agreement between Apple and Google. Annette revealed that Android earned $33 billion in revenue and that profits exceeded $22 billion.

More importantly, she revealed that in 2014, Google paid Apple $1 billion to keep their search bar on the iPhone. She added that this was part of a revenue-sharing agreement where Google would pay Apple 34 percent of search revenue generated from the iPhone. This was on January 14.

Google was furious at this revelation and asked the judge to strike down Hurst’s statements by insisting that the actual figures were confidential and that Hurst’s comments were “hypothetical.” The judge however, let the comments stand.

On January 20, the transcript was made public and Google immediately moved to have the transcript “sealed and redacted.” By 3PM the next day, the transcript was gone. In its filing, Google stated that the information would hamper their ability to negotiate similar deals in the future. Apple separately filed a similar request as well.

Following this, Google filed for sanctions against Hurst, reports ArsTechnica. In their filing, Google’s lawyers stated that Hurst revealed “self-serving representations of sensitive information” and “extremely confidential Google financial information.” They added that this information allowed the press to report on a matter that was only speculation until now.

The judge decided to postpone the matter till after the trial (Google vs Oracle). Once the trial was done, where the judge ruled in Google’s favour, Google brought the matter up again and was given permission to file a 15-page motion seeking sanctions against Hurst.

The ruling won’t happen for several weeks at least and Oracle will get a chance to respond before then.

In related news, ArsTechnica reports that Google is seeking about $3.9 million from Oracle for the coverage of expenditure with regards to the case. This figure includes fees for transcription, managing documents and more. It doesn’t include Google’s legal fees however.