Jury selection begins in high-stakes Oracle-Google dispute

Jury selection in a high-stakes smartphone technology dispute between Oracle Corp and Google Inc will start soon and the high profile trial will kicks off with chief executives of both companies testifying.

In August, Oracle sued Google over seven patents and copyright claims for the Java programming language that Oracle acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems. Oracle claims Google's Android operating system infringes its intellectual property rights to Java.

Google claims it does not violate Oracle's patents and insists that Oracle cannot have copyrights to certain parts of Java.

The damage claims, however, have narrowed down from the $6.1 billion estimated early on and is now pegged at roughly $1 billion, according to Google.

The trial before US district judge William Alsup in San Francisco was expected to last eight weeks, and Alsup had told last month that if the companies intended to settle the case, they should do it by 13 April at noon, in order to save potential jurors a trip to the courthouse. However, the deadline passed on Friday with no announcements.

Both Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Google CEO Larry Page figure on Oracle's list of potential witnesses. According to a court filing on Sunday, Oracle said it anticipated Ellison and Page would be among its first witnesses.