The original version of this report was published on the biweekly IP briefing Skilled in the Art.

It sounds as if Oracle Corp. might be feeling a little amicus envy at the Supreme Court.

An Oracle newsroom blog post under Executive Vice President Ken Glueck's name insinuates—no, make that comes right out and charges—that Google has bought some of its tech industry amici curiae, while accusing others of switching sides out of naked self-interest.

Even by the acrimonious standards of Google v. Oracle, which will be heard March 24 at the Supreme Court, Glueck's attacks are notable.

His argument is that the tech industry isn't really supporting Google in the copyright dispute over the Java programming language, even though Microsoft, IBM and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) have submitted amicus briefs on Google's behalf.

Microsoft is "the original sinner" when it comes to the Java programming language, Glueck writes. He's referring to the DOJ antitrust action against Microsoft in the 1990s, which included anticompetitive attempts to disrupt Java, then owned by Sun Microsystems.

When the Oracle-Google case was first on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 2013, Microsoft filed an amicus brief supporting Oracle on the issue of copyrightability. (It said that if the Java code at issue weren't copyrightable, it would "destablize the software industry.") But then in 2015, Microsoft struck a peace deal with Google on IP. "What changed Microsoft's stance in this litigation was that commercial agreement," Glueck writes. "Microsoft's position is as principled as that."

IBM also tried to get its hands on Java in 2009, but Sun eventually chose to be acquired by Oracle. IBM has been silent each time the case was before the Federal Circuit, but now—having just completed its $34 billion acquisition of open-source software company Red Hat, "IBM really wants its own, non-compatible version of Java for its own commercial purposes," Glueck writes.

Finally, there's the extreme thrashing of CCIA, an organization Glueck says "sets a whole new standard for transactional advocacy" and is "completely beholden to Google, financially and otherwise." That's in part because Microsoft paid off one of its former executives, according to Glueck, a former board member of CCIA.

CCIA president Matt Schruers had this response in a written statement: "CCIA's pro-interoperability fair use stance has remained constant since the 1990s, when it was developed with Oracle's support, as a CCIA member. It is regrettable that what was once a mutual position has now become inconvenient for the company."

In any event, Glueck says in his blog post, "there is no outpouring of support" from the tech community for Google.

So far, there's not much outpouring for Oracle, either, though amici have until Thursday evening to submit their briefs. To date, the highlight is from the Internet Accountability Project (IAP), a newly formed conservative think tank that airs regular criticism of Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Authoring IAP's brief is Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel, & Frederick partner John Thorne. As recently as last year Thorne was general counsel for the High Tech Inventors Alliance, which includes Google, Amazon and Oracle.

Thorne and IAP trace the history of fair use law back to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, arguing that Google's copying of Java declaring code cannot be fair as a matter of law because it replaced Oracle's use in the marketplace.

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