The current round of Oracle vs. Google court proceedings began on May 9 in San Francisco.
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Google argued that because it used only a small part of Java to create Android, a much larger system of software built for a new objective, it qualified for a “fair use” exemption from copyright.
The verdict is in: Google didn’t violate Oracle’s intellectual property rights when it started to build its Android mobile operating system a little over a decade ago. “We strongly believe that Google developed Android by illegally copying core Java technology to rush into the mobile device market”, said Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley.
If Oracle goes ahead with its expected challenge of yesterday’s jury decision, the appeals court could “at least partially redeem itself” by leaving that ruling intact, Higgins said. Under the rules of an open source license, Google was free to fork the code so long as it was not called Java.
Oracle said it saw many grounds to appeal and would do so.
During the trial, the jury heard the testimonies from Google’s, Sun’s and Oracle’s current and former CEOs, computer experts from the companies and loyal programmers.
Google has won a major U.S. court battle with software firm Oracle after a jury ruled it did not unfairly appropriate parts of the Java programming language. “Only when Oracle concluded it lacked the engineering skill to build its own “Java phone” did it choose Plan B – this lawsuit”, Google’s trial brief states.
But William Alsup, the trial judge, later ruled that application program interfaces (APIs) aren’t eligible for protection under USA copyright law.
In 2010 Oracle sued Google for patent and copyright infringement and other claims. APIs have traditionally been open to use, and weren’t even copyrightable until the Court of Appeals ruled in Oracle’s favour.
We believe the win is vital to Google from both technological and financial perspectives.
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Google, a unit of the tech holding company Alphabet Inc., welcomed the jury’s finding in its own statement.
