THE LEGAL war over software rights that Oracle launched against Google late on Thursday could hamper the internet company’s successful push into the smartphone market, industry analysts warned yesterday.

Oracle’s aggressive move was also a “nuclear deterrent” that would spread much more widely across the mobile devices industry, with long-term implications for many handset makers and carriers, said Mark Driver, an analyst at Gartner. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, accuses Google of patent and copyright infringement over the inclusion of parts of Oracle’s Java software in its Android smartphone operating system.

Android, which Google makes available free of charge, has been taken up by handset makers including Motorola and HTC. In the most recent quarter, phones carrying the software overtook Apple’s iPhone in global sales.

Oracle acquired rights to Java, a set of tools that make it easier for software developers to write applications that run on many different operating systems, as part of its purchase of Sun Microsystems earlier this year. The lawsuit shows Oracle will seek to make more money from the rights to Java than Sun did, analysts said.

“You’re definitely going to get a stronger licence enforcement policy – and rightly so, perhaps,” said Al Hilwa, an analyst at IDC.

If Google is forced to pay Oracle for its technology, it could lead it to charge for Android, making the software less attractive to handset makers, he added. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)