How much is too much? In the widely reported nearly year-old legal battle between Oracle (News - Alert) and Google, a claim for $1.4 billion that could rise to as much as $6.1 billion in damages, is apparently too much in regard to Oracle’s suit that accuses Google (News - Alert) of infringing on its Java patents with the Android smartphone operating system. Oracle obtained Java patents with its January 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Late last week, United States District Court Judge  William Alsup reportedly declared in a written statement that the amount of damages Oracle’s expert, Dr. Iain M. Cockburn, a Boston University professor of finance and economics, estimated Google should pay Oracle for allegedly infringing on its Java intellectual property "overreached in multiple ways." 

In fact, by all accounts the judge seemed quite annoyed in his address of the case, with the Inquirer saying he was “peeved,” and :RethinkWireless author Caroline Gabriel saying he was “irritated...with long winded arguments.”   Blogger Billy MacInnnes in MicroScope today reported the judge said the Oracle suit had the “goal of seeing how much it could get away with."

In addition, a post on IT WEB said the judge noted that “the expert who crafted it was paid $700 an hour by Oracle.” Alsup further used the word “crazy” in respect to Oracle hinging the amount of its damages on Android’s (News - Alert) total market value, according to Karen Gullo in Bloomberg.

Oracle was not the exclusive target of harsh words, as Google didn’t escape Alsup’s chastising. In response to Google’s contention that it owes Oracle no damages, Judge Alsup reportedly said, "Zero is ridiculous," a Reuters report revealed. "They're totally wrong on that,” the report quoted Alsup as saying.

Terrence O’Brien in Engadget also said today that the judge “offered harsh criticism for what he viewed as its ‘brazen’ disregard for intellectual property rights.”

The court proceedings, which reportedly lasted an hour, didn’t reach a conclusion for either side last week. Instead, a trial is set for October 31 this year. However, as Mercury News wrote on July 22, “the judge repeated his earlier scolding of Oracle for failing to be more specific about the patent claims it plans to argue in a trial. Oracle has made 50 claims relating to seven patents, but in an effort to streamline the case, Alsup had ordered Oracle to narrow its claims to a manageable number.”

The MicroScope blog said judge Alsup, “also warned Oracle that if its next damages report ‘fails to measure up in any substantial and unseverable way...then it may be excluded altogether without leave to try again.’”

Further, Reuters (News - Alert) quoted Alsup as saying, "If Oracle needs to postpone the October trial until it settles on which claims it truly believes are triable, then it should bring a prompt motion to do so."

In other news, TMCnet recently reported that Oracle revealedthat its Oracle Siebel CRM has earned placement in Gartner’s (News - Alert) 2011 Leaders Quadrant of its “Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers” report.