Oracle-Google jury told to keep deliberating in trial over Java

Jurors deciding whetherGoogle Inc.stole Oracle Inc.’s technology are deadlocked on one of three questions about whether the search engine provider infringed copyrights to build Android software.

U.S. Judge William Alsup in San Francisco, presiding over an intellectual property trial in its third week, sent the jurors home Friday and ordered them to return Monday for more deliberations. Alsup had said he would accept a partial verdict Friday and changed his plan after talking privately with Oracle’s and Google’s lawyers.

“It’s worth sending you home since you told me there’s hope for reaching a unanimous decision on all questions,” Alsup told jurors.

The jury’s foreman told Alsup that the panel’s majority believed the judge should be notified Friday that it’s at an impasse on one question. Other jurors favored more talks Monday “to see if anyone has come up with a new perspective,” the foreman said.

The foreman said the jury can’t agree on one of three questions about whether Google infringed Oracle’s copyrights on the Java programming language when it used the technology to develop the Android operating system, now running on more than 300 million smartphones.

A fourth question, which Alsup will use as guidance for issues that he has to decide, asks whether Google proved that it reasonably relied on Oracle andSun Microsystems Inc., Java’s creator, when it decided not to pay for a Java license.