[fpgeek]

I really don't understand what Oracle's lawyers are thinking.

Yes, coming up with ever-more-creative theories about why Google owes Oracle might have some tactical advantages, but any victory in court on those terms would be pyrrhic.

It doesn't matter how many billions Google coughs up if the next phone call is IBM demanding the company for using SQL.

Aren't Oracle's lawyers looking past the next move? Are they that confident that their API arguments will lose? Do they really have that much faith in the hairs they're splitting between Google's API reuse and Oracle's?

Or is their advice being colored by all the follow-on legal work there will be because Oracle is going down this path?