In the legal wars between Google and Oracle, Google's popular Android mobile platform is at stake. The trial kicks off today in a San Francisco court. The eight-week jury trial will decide the fate of Google's Android OS. Jury selection will begin on Monday, barring a last moment settlement.

The roots of this war are spread back in 2010, when Oracle filed a lawsuit against Google over patent infringement. Oracle is blaming Google for voiding its several patent copyrights with its Android operating system. Most of the issues are related to Java. It is to be noted that Java is a product of Sun Microsystems, which was acquired by Oracle in 2010.

Judge William Alsup has initially scheduled the trials for eight weeks beginning Monday. The trial consists of three phases. The first phase covers copyright claims and the second is focused on patents. And if Oracle wins, then the case will move to third phase to negotiate and finalize amount of damages.

Oracle is demanding $1 billion in compensation from the world's biggest Internet search giant. Apparently, Android OS voids seven patents and copyrights as claimed by Oracle. Out of these seven, only two will be discussed in U.S. District Court of California as other 5 have been outruled. On the other hand, Google has been denying all the critics by calling this claim as "baseless attack" from the same day Oracle filed the lawsuit in 2010.

Oracle estimates a total damage of $6.1 billion that occurred because of Google's wrongdoings. Java is not center of this conflict as everyone is free to use Java, even without a license. The main claim is associated to API (Application Programming Interface). APIs allow several components of a program to communicate with each other. Oracle is accusing that Google has been using 103,400 lines of its code on Android developer Web site.

If Oracle wins this lawsuit, then Google will have to alter code for its Android OS. Also the developers who have put up apps on Google Play Store, will have to re-release their apps by elimination the conflicted code from their respective apps. Google is arguing that these technologies should not be covered under copyright law as Java programming language is worthless without APIs.

(reported by Johnny Wills, edited by Dave Clark)