Google’s use of Oracle’s Java APIs is fair, says jury
Google has won its latest copyright case with Oracle at the US District Court for the Northern District of California after a jury ruled yesterday that its use of application programming interfaces (APIs) found in Oracle’s Java computer program was fair.
In March this year, WIPR reported that Oracle was seeking nearly $10 billion in damages and profits in its long-running copyright lawsuit against Google.
James Malackowski of intellectual property research company Ocean Tomo, which was hired by Oracle, compiled a pre-trial report on requested damages and profits.
The estimate included $475 million in damages and $8.9 billion for recovered profits from Google’s sales of allegedly infringing products.
Oracle sued Google at the California district court in 2010 claiming patent and copyright infringement.
The district court cleared Google of patent infringement, but was undecided on whether the APIs are eligible for copyright protection.
After Oracle appealed against the decision, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the APIs could be protected by copyright and said that Google’s Android software had infringed them.
It then sent the case back to the district court to decide whether Google’s use of the APIs was fair.
Google took the fight to the US Supreme Court but the court left the Federal Circuit’s ruling intact when it refused to hear the case.
The latest ruling by a unanimous jury at the California court found that the Copyright Act allowed “fair use” of the Java elements.
A spokesperson for Google said: “Today's verdict that Android makes fair use of Java APIs represents a win for the Android ecosystem, for the Java programming community, and for software developers who rely on open and free programming languages to build innovative consumer products.”
Dorian Daley, general counsel at Oracle, said: “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.”
