A big blow for Google
The ongoing dispute between Google and Oracle over Android and whether or not the mobile operating system infringes on copyrights of the Java platform will not be solved by the U.S. Supreme Court. Google tried going the Supreme Court route after an appeals court ruled in Oracle's favor, but was turned down, The Wall Street Journal reports.
This case dates back to 2010 when Oracle completed the acquisition of Sun Microsystems for around $7.6 billion. That transferred ownership of Java over to Oracle, and since Google used a modified version of Java to build Android, Oracle feels it's owed licensing fees and damages.
Google's defense was that application programming languages (APIs) aren't eligible for copyright protection, thereby giving the company the right to use Java's APIs at no cost. A San Francisco federal judge sided with Google in 2012, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned the ruling last year and declared that Java APIs were subject to copyright protection "until either the Supreme Court or Congress tells us otherwise."
So why isn't the Supreme Court's refusal to hear Google's case the end of the story? Even though Oracle won the case on appeal, the court left the door open for Google by not coming to a decision on Google's defense that Oracle's copyright falls under fair use. With the Supreme Court refusing to hear Google's case, the company will turn its attention to a lower court, which will decide on the fair use defense.
There's a lot at stake here, both for Google and the software industry as a whole. Oracle is seeking more than $1 billion in damages and presumably an ongoing license fee. In addition, the case's outcome will set a precedent for whether or not APIs can be copyrighted.
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