December 29, 2011 - Two months ago, Oracle scored a win in its patent infringement suit against Google when a judge allowed an unsent email written by a Google engineer to be used as evidence (see our blog entry "e-Dirty Laundry").
Now Google has won a round, as the U.S. Patent Office - in an ex parte patent reexamination initiated by Google - rejected 17 of the 21 claims in one of the patents Oracle claims Google is infringing. The rejected claims include Claim 14, the only one Oracle was asserting against Google from that particular patent, which is U.S. Patent No. 6,192,476.
Despite this victory, the patent infringement lawsuit between Google and Oracle is far from over. There are still six other patents that Oracle's lawsuit claims Google is infringing, and Oracle has six months to appeal the Patent Office's ruling.