By Therese Poletti

Larry Ellison, the outspoken and brash chief executive of Oracle Corp., is always full of surprises.

This week, as one of the primary witnesses in Oracle's (ORCL)  lawsuit against Google (GOOG) , he might be surprising even himself. With Oracle alleging Google's Android software infringes on its intellectual property, Ellison has become an unwitting avenger for his friend and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Jobs, investors may remember, told the author Walter Isaacson many things for his biography before he died last year. One of his more passionate diatribes was on the topic of Google and how Android copied many features of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone and its iOS software. Jobs vowed he would "destroy Android, calling it a "stolen product."

"I will spend my last dying breath, if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs told Isaacson. "I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."

To date, Apple has never sued Google but instead has sued some of its hardware partners, including HTC and Samsung, for infringing on Apple's patents, including those that cover multi-touch gestures, swiping, pinching and expanding and other inventions.

Oracle's smartphone aspirations

Ellison, too, was inspired by the stunning success of the iPhone. He may have been good friends with Jobs, but clearly Ellison did not shy away from the idea of competing with him. In trial in federal court Tuesday, he testified, to the astonishment of many observers, that in 2009 Oracle considered getting into the smartphone business. It looked at buying either Research In Motion (RIMM) or Palm, which was later bought and ultimately dismantled by Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

Oracle concluded that RIM was too expensive. Considering that RIM's shares -- now about $13.11 -- traded in a wide range from around $36.34 to a high of $83.02 during 2009, with 20/20 hindsight, it looks like Oracle made the correct assessment. The software behemoth is often capable of "brutally disciplined business decisions and if they decide they don't have experience in something, they stay out," said Al Hilwa, an analyst at IDC. Of course, Oracle could still be one of the contenders looking at the much-cheaper RIM now that it's lost much of its previous value, but that's a topic for another column.

Ultimately, Oracle decided that Sun Microsystems, which Oracle purchased in January 2010, was a better fit with its own corporate software business, and products of the two companies had long worked together. Sun also had its own software that is used in mobile phones, the Java programming language at the heart of Oracle's lawsuit against Google, and the arsenal for Ellison as the unintended avenger for Jobs.

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 Oracle first filed its lawsuit against Google in August 2010. Ellison testified that he had a meeting in 2010 with then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt to discuss a joint smartphone project with Google, in which Google would use Oracle's version of Java on Android. They never reached a deal.

Another CEO who had also had some fierce discussions with Schmidt in 2010 was Jobs. Google had just launched Android in January 2010. A few months later, as Apple CEO, Jobs was seen meeting Schmidt in a cafe in Palo Alto. During that meeting, Isaacson reported in his book, Jobs asked Schmidt to stop copying the iPhone's features in Android. Oracle is seeking damages of about $1 billion from Google, if it wins its case. As the trial unfolds and more details emerge, it's becoming clear how complex this intellectual property dispute really is. Google argues that it used the freely available elements of Java to develop Android. Former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz is also expected to testify that he supported Google's use of Java.

Some are not yet convinced that Oracle will win any kind of watershed in licensing fees as damages.

"This case is not primarily about damages," wrote Florian Mueller, an intellectual property analyst, in a blog post earlier this month about the case.

So what is it about? Mueller argues that the most important question in the case is "whether Oracle will win a technically impactful injunction" that would block its use of Java in Android-based devices. Google's lawyers argued Tuesday that because Oracle was not able to make a smartphone, it now "wants a share of Android's profits."

But the case is also turning out to be a way for Ellison to seek some revenge against Google on behalf of Jobs, unwitting as it may be.

Jobs is continuing to haunt Android, in more ways than one.

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