The Oracle v. Google patent case is now in the hands of a jury, as lawyers for the two tech giants presented their closing arguments this morning. The closings were fairly technical diatribes about how Android's Dalvik virtual machine works: the talk was about "symbolic references" versus "numeric references," field resolution, and static arrays.

For Oracle especially, a great deal is on the line now. Oracle is unlikely to get much from the mixed verdict that came in the copyright phase, and if it can't convince these jurors that Android infringes the two Java-related patents it has presented to them in a San Francisco courtroom over the last week, what was recently being called the "World Series of IP Trials" is going to end with a whimper.

Oracle: "Clean Room," "Open Source," "Fair Use" are irrelevant

Oracle's lead lawyer, Michael Jacobs, started out by reminding jurors that many of the defenses that would have applied in the copyright phase don't apply in the patent phase. If Oracle describes something in its patent that Google does—it infringes, period.

"This case is based on the claim language," said Jacobs. "It's not based on ancillary issues, not based on things like whether Android is open or not, nor whether Java was dedicated to the public in some way."

He showed a slide with bullet points reminding jurors what doesn't matter in this section of the case: "'Fair use' is irrelevant; 'clean room' is irrelevant; 'open source' is irrelevant."

The first patent, Jacobs continued, was filed in 1992, invented by James Gosling, an ex-Sun employee who is considered the "father of Java." Despite the fact that Oracle's two patents were filed well before the smartphone era, they are relevant to Android, Jacobs said. "They [Google] confronted on a cell phone the very same problems Java programmers were then dealing with on desktops," Jacobs told the jury. "There's a reason these patents are infringed. Google started out [building Android] by using the basic Java architecture."

Oracle's '104 patent—acknowledged as the more valuable of the two—describes a system that uses "symbolic references" to retrieve data from specific areas of memory. Jacobs told the jury that Google's own engineers—primarily Andy McFadden—admitted in their testimony that the Android's Dalvik virtual machine gets data in a way just like Oracle's patents describe.

Google was trying to pretend that certain numbers in the code weren't symbolic references, Jacobs said. "Numbers are symbolic references all the time," he explained, citing athletic uniforms, social security numbers, and student ID numbers as examples. He also argued Google infringes a patent which describes a way of initializing static arrays (the '520 patent). The Dalvik file simulator.java, "aligns almost directly with the claim language," Jacobs said.

Jacobs used the final part of his argument to talk about the importance of patent rights. "Patents are right there in the Constitution," he said. "You can tell by the level of resources being given to this trial how important this dispute is, how important your role is, and how important these patents are to Oracle."

Google: Android is "fundamentally different"

The evidence is overwhelming, Google lead lawyer Robert Van Nest told the jury. On one side, there's Oracle's technical expert, Dr. John Mitchell. But Mitchell was defied not just by Google's own paid expert, but by Google engineers and the Android source code itself, which doesn't correlate with the terms used in the patent. Even though independent invention is not a defense to patent infringement, Van Nest also pushed the point that Android is an original, in-house creation.

"The features in Android that are accused are fundamentally different from any of the claims of the '104 or '502 patents," Van Nest said. "They were designed from scratch by Google engineers—Bornstein, McFadden, and others. They were designed to work in a smartphone, without any reference at all to the Sun patents."

No one at Google was even aware of the Sun patents while they were building Android, Van Nest said. "This case is not about Java versus Android," Van Nest said. "We're dealing with two specific patents with some very narrow requirements."

The '104 patent involves "symbolic references," something that "Android never uses—never," said Van Nest. It also describes a dynamic system, whereas dexopt , a Dalvik optimizing program, "is a static operation."

As to the '520 patent, he described it as a very small feature. The patent describes a way of initializing arrays, which Oracle says is used by the Android "dx tool." Google says what that tool does is "pattern matching," not "simulating execution," as the patent says.

Van Nest also discussed willfulness—a separate question on the jury form, which the jury won't need to consider if the patents aren't infringed. He again brought up Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz's public praise of Android after its launch. "Their reaction was not, 'Oh my gosh, you're a terrible infringer,'" said Van Nest. "It was, 'Thank you. You've strapped a rocket onto Java.' Why would somebody go search Sun patents when Sun itself was saying, 'Welcome to the Java community?'"

He also replayed the video deposition from Andy Rubin, who said he didn't recommend engineers look at patents. "Honestly, engineers aren't lawyers," Rubin asked when he was grilled by Oracle's lawyer on tape. "Some of the questions you've asked me today are so complicated, my head could explode. I don't want my engineers to focus on that, I want them to write code."

What happens next

The jury will begin deliberations now and can take as long as they like. In the first phase, the jurors took longer than expected—a full week of deliberations—and still weren't able to reach a verdict on one key question. After that, there will be a final "damages phase" to the trial, but there might not be much to that after the copyright verdict was muddled.

If Oracle wins, it will have a shot at millions—but it still may not amount to much by the standards of these companies. Oracle's own damages expert valued the two patents left in the case at a bit over $4 million in late March. That might get stretched a bit, but whatever it wins will be a far cry from the $6 billion it once believed it could wring from Google. Oracle would also be able to ask for an injunction that could force Google to alter Android's programming. The standards for getting an injunction are high, though, and Google would surely fight that every step of the way.

Mostly, though, a patent win would show that Oracle's long legal crusade has not been in vain. If Oracle loses this patent skirmish, getting anything from Google will be like squeezing water from a stone. Oracle has said it intends to demand "infringer's profits" over one nine-line function that was copied in Android, and several decompiled Java files used in testing.

Alsup has called asking for a big payout based on that evidence "ridiculous" but promised Oracle's lawyers they will get a chance to present them to the jury regardless.