Google wins six-year legal battle with Oracle, thanks to ‘fair use’ clause

11,500 lines of Java code in Android Operating System

Hi Tech fans and mostly developers, GOOGLE WON! A six-year court case brought by software firm Oracle, which claimed Google had infringed its copyright by using 11,500 lines of Java code in its Android Operating System. After a two week trial, the federal jury concluded on Thursday that Google's Android Operating System does not infringe Oracle-owned copyrights because of its re-implementation of 37 Java APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) is protected by "fair use" clause. The verdict was reached after three days of deliberations.

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This news is so much welcome by developers, who typically rely on free access to APIs to develop third-party services. I for sure am happy that "reasoning" won.

"I salute you for your extreme hard work in this case,"

US District Judge William Allsup told the jury, who had deliberated for three days at San Francisco Federal Court.

"I know there will be appeals and the like."

Oracle had contested that Google's use of its proprietary Java code exceeded fair use, and was seeking damages of Up to $9bn. Android is by far the most popular mobile operating system, with 1.4billion monthly active users worldwide and a market share of more than 80%. Those users downloaded 65bn apps in 2015 alone. There was only one question on the special verdict form, asking if Google's use of the Java APIs was a "fair use" under copyright law. The jury unanimously answered "yes," in Google's favour and the verdict ended the trial. But Oracle, however, vowed to appeal.

"We strongly believe that Google developed Android by illegally copying core Java technology to rush into the mobile device market. Oracle brought this lawsuit to put a stop to Google's illegal behaviour. We believe there are numerous grounds for appeal and we plan to bring this case back to the Federal Circuit on appeal,"

Dorian Daley, Oracle's General Counsel, said in a statement.

The “fair use” decision in this case sets a strong precedent in an industry where programs and apps are often as much constructed from various building blocks of code that already exist. If the company that owns the original code language – as Oracle does with Java – can claim ownership over systems which use parts of its code, in varying sizes, that might have a serious dampening effect on developers, few of whom have Google’s deep pockets and batteries of legal artillery to call into battle in their defense. That means today’s verdict marks a victory for Google of the latest battle in a years-long war between these two titanic companies. It will probably not be the last, as Oracle is likely to appeal.

When it was developed, Android partly used the programming language Java to build its API. Java was a widely used language, developed by a company called Sun Microsystems in the 1990s.

Sun was bought by Larry Ellison’s $169bn software conglomerate Oracle in 2010, and after unsuccessfully trying to negotiate for a deal which would allow Google to license the Java APIs, Oracle sued for copyright and patent infringement, firing the first shot in the legal war.

The key question in the case was this: between a patent, in which the mechanism is the idea being protected by law, and a copyrighted text, in which the language is the idea being protected by law, where does a program – in which the language is the mechanism – fall?

The first case went to Google in 2012 when a Washington DC judge sided with Google, saying that APIs can’t be copyrighted, effectively torpedoing Oracle’s case that the Java APIs used in Android infringed upon Oracle’s intellectual property. That order which followed a jury trial which had a patent phase – which Google also won – and a copyright phase, which ended in a split verdict.

In his order, Judge Allsup – who described the action as “the first of the so-called ‘smartphone war’ cases” – dismissed Oracle’s case, saying that “the particular elements replicated by Google were free for all to use under the Copyright Act.”

But that was just the beginning. In 2013, the federal circuit court of appeals heard Oracle’s case again, and in May 2014 the federal judge reversed Allsup’s ruling, holding that the “structure, sequence and organization” of the Java API packages – there are 37 in total which Oracle claimed Google copied – and remanded the case back to the district court to be retried, this time to discover whether Google’s actions constituted “fair use” of Oracle’s technology.

"They copied 11,500 lines of code,"

Oracle attorney Peter Bicks said during closing arguments.
"It's undisputed. They took the code, they copied it, and put it right into Android."

Share this widely and lets all converse, can APIs be copyrighted fully? will my app be Oracle's if I only used a few lines of Java codes? Is "fair use" fair? What do you think of the jury's decision on this case? Post your comments below and don't forget to Sign Up your email address too.