Google has asked a California court to throw out a lawsuit filed by Oracle that accuses the Internet search giant of violating patents held by the US business software company.
Google replied to Oracle's patent infringement suit in a filing on Monday with the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.
Oracle is accusing Google's Android software of infringing on Java computer programming language patents held by Oracle stemming from its recent purchase of Java inventor Sun Microsystems.
Google denied the patent infringement claims, and said it believes mobile phone makers and other users of its open-source Android operating system are entitled to use the Java technology in dispute.
Google said Sun, before it was acquired by Oracle, had declared that Java would be open-source, allowing any software developer to use it, and released some of its source code in 2006 and 2007.
Google accused Oracle of hypocrisy, saying that at the time, "Sun came under significant criticism from members of the open source community, including Oracle Corp., for its refusal to fully open source Java."
Oracle completed its acquisition of Sun, a one-time Silicon Valley star, on January 27 and subsequently filed suit against Google.
Google-backed Android software is used in an array of devices that have been gaining ground in the hotly competitive global smartphone market.
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