Federal Circuit rules Google infringed Oracle’s copyright

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled that Google infringed copyright covering database maker Oracle’s Java programme.

Oracle owns the licence to the Java programme, which was originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle for $7.4 billion in 2010.

Oracle was successful in a case brought against Google in 2012 for a series of copyright and patent infringements. However, no verdict was made over whether computer code can be protected by copyright. Oracle’s claim that Google infringed on 37 application programming interfaces (API) resulted in a hung jury.

Google cited a defence that it was necessary for them to use some of the code in order to run pre-Android Java code.

The Federal Circuit, however, rejected the defence and has ruled that it is possible to copyright code.

Federal Circuit judge Kathleen O’Malley said: “[Google] chose to copy Oracle’s declaring code to capitalise on the pre-existing community of programmers who were accustomed to using Java API packages.”

She added: “We conclude that the declaring code and the structure, sequence and organisation of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection, we reverse the district court’s copyrightability determination with instructions to reinstate the jury’s infringement finding.”

The case will now return to William Alsup, judge for the court of the Northern District of California, who will review the case.

Google and Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.