US Supreme Court refuses to hear Oracle v Google case
The US Supreme Court has refused to hear a dispute between Oracle and Google centring on whether computer programs should be eligible for copyright protection.
The court’s nine judges said today, June 29, that they would not hear the case.
Google had appealed to the court against a May 2014 ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that said Google had infringed Oracle's copyright.
California-based Google filed a writ of certiorari in October last year in which it asked the Supreme Court to rule on the case, which has been making its way through the courts since 2010.
At the centre of the dispute are 37 application programming interfaces (APIs) used in Oracle’s Java computer program.
In 2010, Oracle filed both a patent and a copyright claim against Google at the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
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 federal circuit ruled that the APIs could be protected by copyright and said that Google’s Android software had infringed them.
Google then took its fight to the Supreme Court but the court left the federal circuit’s ruling intact.
In May, WIPR reported that Donald Verrilli, the US solicitor general at the Department of Justice, had recommended that the Supreme Court should not hear the case.
Although the Supreme Court does not have to take the advice of the solicitor general, his or her opinion does carry weight.
The solicitor general is referred to by some as the ‘tenth justice’, in reference to the Supreme Court’s nine judges.
Oracle counsel Dorian Daley told WIPR: “Today’s Supreme Court decision is a win for innovation and for the technology industry that relies on copyright protection to fuel innovation.”
Google had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication but WIPR will update the story should the company get in touch.
