The Law and Justice Room
The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with Google over Oracle in one of the highest-profile copyright disputes to ever hit Silicon Valley.
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that Google didn’t violate copyright law when it used around 11,000 lines of Oracle-created code when developing its Android system back in 2005. The ruling stands to have substantial implications for software development in the U.S.
The court held in a 6-2 decision that Google’s use of Oracle’s Java application programming interface (or API) fell under the legal definition of fair use.
Oracle, which previously sought $9 billion in damages, doubled down on its stance that Google ”stole” its snippets of code in a statement regarding the ruling.
Justice Breyer pointed out in the opinion that Google’s copies of the original snippets of Oracle code only included chunks “that were needed to allow programmers to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program,” which falls under the definition of fair use.
Breyer went on to write that the definition of “fair use” in the tech sector is pretty “flexible.” Computer programs, he explained, differ from many other kinds of copyrightable works because these programs “ always serve a functional purpose.” Holding exclusive ownership over a snippet of code, in this case, has a high potential to “trigger negative consequences,” like hampering innovation in the computer science sphere.
Allowing Oracle to gatekeep its API in this case, he went on, “would risk harm to the public,” because it would limit the creativity for programmers moving forward—especially because APIs are notoriously difficult to build from the ground up.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Samuel Alito, wrote that the court defining a “transformative” work as it pertains to software as a “use that will help others ‘create new products’” effectively “eviscerates copyright.”
“By copying Oracle’s work, Google decimated Oracle’s market and created a mobile operating system now in over 2.5 billion actively used devices, earning tens of billions of dollars every year. If these effects on Oracle’s potential market favor Google, something is very wrong with our fair use analysis,” Thomas wrote.....snip~
Supreme Court Sides With Google in Historic API Copyright Fight Against Oracle (msn.com)
The Supremes dropped the ball on this one.
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Originally Posted by RMNIXON
