The US Patent and Trademark Office has completed its preliminary examination of another of the patents on which Oracle's lawsuit against Google's Android is based and has rejected all its claims.

At Google's request, the USPTO is reexamining all seven Java-related patents asserted against Android's Dalvik virtual machine. It has now rejected, on a preliminary basis, all 24 claims of Patent No. 6,125,447 finding that they are anticipated by either of two prior art references.

According to Florian Mueller:

This is the first patent-in-suit that has been rejected (on the aforementioned preliminary basis) in its entirety. But it's already the third event in which all claims of a given patent actually asserted by Oracle have been rejected. Oracle did not assert all 168 claims of the seven patents. Oracle made infringement contentions concerning 132 of them.

As in the case of the other rejected claims (see Patent Office ruling reduces Oracle's case against Google) , this is a non-final decision. Next Oracle can traverse the rejection, that is (plead its case to reverse the decision) and if the PTO maintains the rejection, Oracle may appeal it.

However as Scott Daniels comments:

The cumulative effect of these reexamination rejections of Oracle’s patent claims may lead Judge Alsup to believe that the reexaminations will have a major impact on the claims for the October trial.  If so, Judge Alsup would be encouraged to stay Oracle’s infringement litigation pending completion of the reexamination proceedings.

So it may be more than a matter of months before Oracle v Google is all over.

Previous articles:

Patent Office ruling reduces Oracle's case against Google

Oracle v Google - Judge limits scope of trial

Judge losing patience with Oracle v Google?

Oracle v Google - it's just about money