Google lashes out at Oracle. Is anyone surprised?

From the 'What Took So Long?' files:

So the other shoe has dropped and Google has now legally responded to Oracle's lawsuit on alleged Android patent infringement on Java intellectual property issues.

It's a 27 page legal filing, but let me summarize it succinctly for you. Google is denying Oracle's claims of patent infringement. Going a step further, Google is questioning the validity of Oracle's patents

Is anyone surprised? Well they shouldn't be.

Back when Oracle first filed there lawsuit, Google sent out a statement that said they would defend open source standard and called the Oracle lawsuit 'baseless'.

The way I read Google's response is that this will become a case about patent validity, which will ultimately have much wider repercussions than than just the Google/Oracle case. This case will test some the patentability of one of the most popular development languages.