Friday, March 29, 2024

Supreme Court inaction is good news for Oracle in case against Google

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Since 2010 a lawsuit between Oracle and Google has been wending its way through the court system as the two tech giants battle it out to determine whether Google will have to pay Oracle for the use of Java code in the Android operating system. The latest stop was the Supreme Court where Google hoped the justices would hear an appeal concerning the ability of APIs to be copyrighted. The justices declined to take action to overturn a May 2014 appeals court ruling that favored Oracle.

At the appellate court level, the justices had determined that 37 APIs were entitled to copyright protection. Until then the concept of APIs being protected by copyright had been unsettled. Given how the software world is moving increasingly to the use of APIs to enable interactions between different systems and programs, the ruling could have a far-ranging impact.

Even though the Supreme Court let stand the ruling that APIs are protected by copyright law, Google has a separate argument pending in which they argued that even if the code making up the APIs were subject to copyright protection, Google could still use it without paying a fee under fair use provisions. The original jury trial was deadlocked over the fair use argument and the issue still has to be retried.

At stake is $1 billion that Oracle claims Google owes for the use of the Java code in Android.

source: Wall Street Journal

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