Supreme Court steps into Google-Oracle copyright fight
Litigation Reports
The Supreme Court said Friday it will referee a high-profile copyright dispute between technology giants Oracle and Google. Oracle says it wants nearly $9 billion from Google.
The case stems from Google’s development of its hugely popular Android operating system by using Oracle’s Java programming language. A federal appeals court found that Google unfairly used Java without paying for it, the second appellate ruling in Oracle’s favor. A trial court has yet to assess damages.
The justices agreed to review the appeals court ruling, and arguments are expected early next year. The first Android phone went on sale in 2008 and Google says more than 2 billion mobile devices now use Android.
The dispute stretches back to 2010, when Oracle filed suit over Google’s use of 11,500 lines of Java code. In the first of two trials, a federal judge ruled that so-called “application programming interfaces” (APIs) weren’t protected by copyright.
After the appeals court overturned that ruling, a jury found in a second trial that Google had made “fair use” of the programming code.
“There is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and function as the original in a competing platform,” Judge Kathleen O’Malley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit wrote in a decision siding with Oracle.
Microsoft was among many parties that urged the Supreme Court to upend the appeals court ruling. The Trump administration, responding to a request from the court for its views, said the justices should stay out of the case.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seems prepared to allow the Trump administration to end a program that allows some immigrants to work legally in the United States and protects them from deportation.
There did not appear to be any support among the five conservatives in extended arguments for blocking the administration’s decision to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. It currently protects 660,000 immigrants who came to the United States as children and are here illegally.
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