In what some are calling the "World Series of intellectual property trials", or "Larry vs. Larry" if you're nasty, the tech world's two 8-gajillion pound gorillas are set to square off in court over a meaty piece of intellectual property. The IP in question: Java, the ubiquitous software platform that Oracle gobbled up in 2010's phagocytosis of Sun Microsystems. According to Oracle's lawyers, the Google hivemind ripped off several Java patents when it included a handful of Java API calls and lines of source code while building it's Android operating system.

Although the source material may be a little dry for those who doesn't speak Java's language, there's new legal territory being covered here — namely, whether it's possible to copyright the language in which a piece of software is written. As Google (and All Things D) puts it, you can copyright a musical composition, but you can't copyright all of jazz.

Oracle, on the other hand, wants to take the Goog for all they can get out of this trial. If they win, Larry Ellison & Company are expected to push for a $1 billion award from the Mountain View company. That's enough cash for Ellison to purchase 125 new yachts or exactly one Instagram. The two Larrys and their respective companies have already failed to reach a settlement out of court, even after Google offered to give Oracle $2.8 million and a cut of Android, which has over 50% of the smartphone market share according to recent ComScore data. In a legal brief, Oracle's lawyers argued that copyright law should protect their property at "a much finer level of detail" than the more general protection offered by their Java patents.

Anyhow, both Google CEO Larry Page and Oracle Supervillain Larry Ellison are potential witnesses in the case, which could begin in a San Francisco courtroom as early as Tuesday of this week.

[AllThingsD]
[WSJ]