The jury in the Oracle-Google trial will begin its second day of deliberations today, following a round of closing arguments by lawyers for both sides.

From Oracle’s perspective, the basic question jurors will have to answer, as its lawyer Michael Jacobs put it, is whether it’s okay for one company to use another company’s intellectual property without permission. (See Jacobs’ slide deck, embedded below.)

Google attorney Robert Van Nest argued that the amount of Oracle IP that it used was so small as to be “no big deal whatsoever.”

Oracle sued Google in 2010, after Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems and thus became the owner of its Java programming language. Google is accused of using some parts of Java to create Android without having first obtained the relevant licenses, first from Sun, then from Oracle.

Monday’s closing arguments constituted the end of the first phase of the trial, which has also turned into a closely watched battle of the proper use of copyrights over software.

Once the jury comes back, which could be as soon as today, the trial will shift to a second phase concerning patents, after which a third phase will determine the amount of damages, if any. The full trial is expected to last two months.

Judge William Alsup, in his final instructions to the jury, reiterated the parameters of the case, telling panelists that copyright protection covers the “expression of ideas,” but not methods of operation. He said the copyrights Oracle has exerted cover the “structure, sequence and organization” of software code.

Google has argued that APIs shouldn’t be subject to copyright protection because they’re more akin to tools and techniques that programmers use to build software.

Oracle has argued that copyright protections should apply because they’re more granular and targeted than trade-secret law or patents.

day11-closing-1609612

(Image courtesy of icanhascheezburger.com)

Sadly, yes.

This morning, patent-holding company WiLAN filed suit against Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and six others, accusing them of violating two wireless patents: No. RE 37,802, which covers certain aspects of CDMA and HSPA communications; and No. 5,282,222, which relates to Wi-Fi and LTE.

Filed in a Texas court known to be a haven for patent trolls, the suit seeks damages and an injunction against any further infringements, which will presumably be used to squeeze the accused companies for licensing fees, which are WiLAN’s lifeblood. Indeed, reporting earnings earlier this year, WiLAN said it expected new licensing agreements to bolster its bottom line quite a bit in the years ahead. Said CEO Jim Skippen, “our investment in litigation could generate a significant return in the future.“

Fark.com publisher Drew Curtis says he’s settled a nonsensical suit brought by something called Gooseberry Natural Resources LLC, which claimed Curtis’s site and a host of others had infringed a patent for “news release generation.”

The take-away is that Curtis says he was able to get Gooseberry to drop the suit without having to pay the patent holder a dime; he says he would have countersued but didn’t want to spend the money.

Well worth reading all of Curtis’s words on the topic, but if you’re pressed for time his Fark-ready headline will do: “Patent-infringement lawsuit against Fark settled for zero dollars. Also, patent trolls suck hairy donkey balls.”

Gooseberry’s original suit, filed in January, named several big Web publishing companies, including Condé Nast, Yahoo and AOL, via TechCrunch (you can read the complaint here via another entertainingly titled post).

Curtis says that Yahoo settled “a while back” and that Condé Nast settled this week; he says AOL is still fighting the suit. I’ve asked all three companies, as well as Gooseberry’s lawyer, for comment.

“I guess you know you’ve made it in software when Microsoft is protesting your event. Or maybe when they’ve sued you. This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened in my career.”

– Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff says Microsoft is a patent troll. Looks like it takes one to know one. On Thursday, the company answered Microsoft’s charges of patent infringement with patent-infringement charges of its own.

In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, Salesforce accuses Microsoft of willfully violating five of its patents and using them in everything from Windows 7 to the Windows Live authentication system. And the company is really going for the neck here: Not only is it seeking triple monetary damages, it has hired David Boies, the former U.S. Justice Department attorney who successfully argued the agency’s antitrust case against Microsoft, to represent it.

But if Microsoft (MSFT) finds this disconcerting, the company isn’t letting on. Reached for comment, Horacio Gutierrez, vice president and deputy general counsel, said it’s still intent on taking Salesforce (CRM) to the mat over this. “We are reviewing Salesforce.com’s filing, which we have just received,” he said. “We remain confident about our position and will continue to press ahead with the complaint we initiated in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.”

“Patent trolls are part of the industry today; that’s just the way it is,” he said. “We’ve dealt with them before and we’ll deal with this situation in the same exact way. I’m just very disappointed in this, from a former leader of our industry, that they would do this.”

Benioff’s remarks today echo those he made during a May 20 earnings call, though this time he exercised a bit of restraint and stopped short of decrying Microsoft (MSFT) as a bunch of “alley thugs.”

His message, I suppose, is that Salesforce.com (CRM) isn’t much worried by Microsoft’s suit–though perhaps it should be, given the limited patent portfolio in its defense arsenal and Microsoft’s endgame here. As analyst Rob Enderle wrote last week:

Microsoft wants to set an example and losing isn’t an option. In addition the patents in question are key to being able to defend Microsoft’s existing market making the combination into one of the most important legal efforts that Microsoft is likely to undertake. This means they probably won’t settle, will fund the effort fully, and will do whatever it takes to make it successful. ?

But there’s one more company at the end of that oblique line of ownership: Intellectual Ventures, an “invention capital firm” or patent troll, depending on your views on innovation and intellectual property.

Over the past few days, multiple sources with knowledge of the patent have told me it is owned by Intellectual Ventures. And now Intellectual Ventures has confirmed this. The company operates Memscom LLC, which operates Durham Logistics LLC, and through Durham, owns patent #7,679,604.

According to intellectual property consulting firm Avancept, Intellectual Ventures is linked to some 1,110 shell companies and affiliated entities. Evidently, Memscom and Durham Logistics are two of them.

Patent #7,679,604 is just one of many that Intellectual Ventures owns through that pair of LLCs. The U.S. Patent and Trade Office lists 29 patents and patent applications assigned to Durham Logistics (see list below; click to enlarge), all of which were first developed by ArrayComm, the wireless communications software company founded by cellphone pioneer Marty Cooper.

Among them, #6,834,249, a motion-control patent nearly identical to #7,679,604, that was granted in 2004 after a 2001 application and would seem to predate many of the motion-sensing smartphones currently on the market.

What does Intellectual Ventures intend to do with these patents? Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? Said an Intellectual Ventures spokesperson: “We don’t currently have specific plans to announce regarding any asset(s) in particular, but we are actively talking with customers about licensing our invention portfolio on fair and reasonable terms.”

COMPLETE COVERAGE:

• New Motion Control Patent Could Shake Up Smartphone Industry
• Smartphone Motion Patent’s Authors Are Google, Apple Engineers
• Confirmed: Intellectual Ventures Owns Smartphone Motion-Control Patent

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here is a video of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Nathan Myhrvold, Founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures.

In it, Mossberg wrangles with the former Microsoft (MSFT) CTO and research guru over his controversial company, which is assembling a large body of patents and inventions.

The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece today about Myhrvold’s efforts (and did not use our D6 video covering the exact same topic, but we happily link to the Journal’s article anyway!), discussing how Myhrvold is “using that clout to press tech giants to sign some of the costliest patent-licensing deals ever negotiated.”

The video of the interview is in three parts.

In this first part, Myhrvold talks about exactly what Intellectual Ventures is–essentially, supporting inventors before they invent–discusses the importance of patience in the inventing business, gives examples of inventions in arenas like energy and defines what a “patent troll” is (not him, he insists).