On Monday, US District Judge William Alsup, who presided over the Google-Oracle patent-infringement trial in federal court in San Francisco, ordered Google for the second time to disclose the names of its `paid' advocates in the case.

Judge Alsup's second order came after Google's non-compliance with the August 7 order, which required both Oracle and Google to name the commentators and authors who were paid by them to write about the ongoing copyright case involving the two high-profile companies.

While Oracle had revealed that it had `paid relationships' with two people - blogger Florian Mueller and Stanford University's Prof Paul Goldstein -, Google had said in its August 17 court filing that it had not paid money to influence the coverage of the case.

Google said that it did not pay any "journalists, bloggers, or other commentators" to write about its ongoing lawsuit against Oracle, even though nonprofit organizations, universities and trade groups receiving money from the company have been commenting on the case.

Acknowledging that it was aware of the fact that representatives of some of the organizations with which it has financial ties had "elected to comment on the case," Google reiterated that it had not been involved in any "quid pro quo" arrangements for coverage.

However, Judge Alsup ordered Google a second time to disclose its paid relationships, and said: "Public commentary that purports to be independent may have an influence on the courts and/or their staff if only in subtle ways."