The Supreme Court Rules Against Oracle in Long-Running Android Copyright Case
The copyright battle over Android and Java that started way back in 2010 has finally been settled by the Supreme Court. In a 6-2 decision with Justice Barrett recusing herself, the court dismissed the claims from Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) to rule in favor of Alphabet (NASDAQ: (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) subsidiary Google.
Early versions of the Android software platform for mobile devices included 11,500 lines of code taken directly from the source code of Oracle's Java programming language. Oracle claimed that Google's reuse of these lines infringed on Java's copyright, demanding as much as $9 billion in compensation. Google's lawyers said that computer code doesn't fall under the protection of standard copyright terms due to its functional nature, and that the particular code in question was always meant to serve a public purpose as part of Java's application programming interface (API).
Some courts on the way to the SCOTUS desk agreed with Oracle's view, but the Justices came down on Google's side of the argument. The copying was seen as "fair use" of Oracle's Java API code as a matter of law. The case has been sent back to the Federal Circuit Court for final proceedings that must conform to this new SCOTUS ruling.
Source Fool.com
