Google wants $4 million from Oracle to cover the legal costs it incurred during the infringement litigation over the Android mobile operating system.  In a brief (pdf) of Google’s Bill of Costs filed in federal court, Google lead counsel Robert Van Nest of Keker & Van Nest, LLP in San Francisco argued that Oracle is required to pay Google’s legal costs because the judge and jury ruled in favor of Google on almost every claim during the six-week trial.  The $4 million figure includes only the legal (i.e. administrative costs) expenses of the litigation and not the attorney fees (i.e. billable hours) associated with the case.

“Google prevailed on a substantial part of the litigation,” read Google’s brief.  “[Oracle] recovered none of the relief it sought in this litigation.  Accordingly, Google is the prevailing party and is entitled to recover costs.”  Google has not publicly revealed an itemized list of its expenses, but the total bill included $2.9 million spent copying and organizing documents.  According to the brief, the company juggled 97 million documents during the case.

In the underlying litigation, Oracle lost an infringement case against Google concerning various Java APIs and the way they were utilized in the Android operating system.  The judge decided that the structure, sequence, and order of these APIs wasn’t covered by existing copyright law and threw out the majority of the claims against Google.