Google smartphones are the hottest things since sliced bread, but that may not do much to save Google from getting battered by rival software developer Oracle in the courts.  Oracle has sued Google, accusing it of including open source projects in Android that illegally copy proprietary source code from Sun Microsystems, Inc., a subsidiary of Oracle Corp. and makers of Java.

Strangely Google seemed to almost admit this when responding to the lawsuit, indicating that it knew the Apache version of Java it used was untested with Sun's Technology Compatibility Kit and thus did not have the rights to the decompiled Sun Java source code it used.  Google admitted to use the Apache code in Android anyways, complaining in the response that Sun and Oracle are trying to destroy openness by preventing licensing of open implementations Java source.  In an 

Now Florian Mueller, who runs the FOSSpatents blog, has offered up a whopping 43 more files that appear to be directly taken from Sun/Oracle without permission.  Six of the files belong in the adjacent directory to the copied files Sun/Oracle identified and displayed in court documents.  Another 37 files elsewhere in the Android source were directly copied from the Mobile Media API, which Google may not have had the rights to use.

While past copyright litigation against the firm and its partners (for example Apple's lawsuit against HTC) seemed unreasonable and tenuous, here Google appears to have knowingly used code that was owned by someone else, then justified that action by saying it didn't like the current licensing situation.

Google will likely play innocent and argue that Android is free and open, so it can't pay exorbitant court fines for infringing on Sun's property.  But, in reality Google is leveraging its dominant position in the mobile phone industry to raking in hundreds of millions in mobile advertising dollars.  After all -- Google Search is free, Gmail is free, Google Docs is free, and Android is free, but the company still seems to be making a whole lot of money.

Updated 1/21/2011

ZDNET’s Ed Burnett has posted an article in response to Florian Mueller’s analysis and has concluded that Google is in the clear in this case.

The second set of 37 files is actually zipped up into one file called MMAPI.zip and tucked away in a directory used for native code audio drivers for one particular type of chip set. Florian really had to go digging for this one. I double-checked the make files and it’s clear this file is not shipped with Android either. Somebody uploaded it by mistake and it should simply be deleted.