The Associated PressApr 06, 2021 4:26:13 PM IS
Tech companies sighed in relief on Monday after the Supreme Court sided with Google in a copyright battle with Oracle. The Supreme Court said Google did nothing wrong copying code to develop the Android operating system that is now used on most smartphones. To create Android, which was released in 2007, Google wrote millions of lines of new computer code. It also used approximately 11,500 lines of code that are copyrighted as part of Oracle’s Java platform. Oracle had sued to look for billions.
However, the Supreme Court sided with Google 6-2, describing the copying as “fair use”. The result is what most tech companies big and small had focused on. Both Microsoft and IBM were among the heavyweights in the industry who filed briefs in support of Google in this case. She and others warned that ruling against the Mountain View, California-based company could have profound consequences that could hamper innovation and drive software development.
Oracle has had support from the film and recording industries, as well as from publishers who prefer full copyright protection to protect their profits from books, articles, films, TV shows, and music. The Trump administration had also backed Oracle.
In his opinion on the majority in the court, Judge Stephen Breyer wrote that Google “only took what was needed” and that “Google copying was transformative,” a word the court used “to describe a use of copying that adds something new and important “.
Google logo. Image: AP
Google had said its actions had long been common in the industry, a practice that had had a positive impact on technological progress. They say there is no copyright protection for the purely functional, non-creative computer code it uses, something that couldn’t be written otherwise. However, Oracle of Austin, Texas argued that Google had “committed a tremendous act of plagiarism.”
The case has been going on for a decade. Google won the first round when a judge dismissed Oracle’s copyright claim. However, this decision was overturned on appeal. A jury then took Google’s side, but an appeals court again disagreed.
Breyer wrote that in reviewing the lower court’s decision, the judges assumed “that the material was copyrighted for reasons of reasoning”.
“However, we believe that the copying in question is fair use. Therefore, copying from Google did not infringe copyright law, ”he wrote.
At one point in the decision, Breyer used a recipe finding robot as part of an analogy to explain how code works. At another point, he invoked a short story in one sentence to acknowledge that copying a small amount might still matter. Breyer contained both the story, originally written in Spanish, and the translation: “When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.”
Judge Clarence Thomas wrote in a dissent endorsed by Judge Samuel Alito that he believed that “the code at issue here is copyrighted by Oracle and that Google’s use of that copyrighted code has been far from fair. “
Only eight judges heard the case because it was discussed after Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in October but before Judge Amy Coney Barrett joined the court.
In a statement, Kent Walker, Google’s Chief Legal Officer, described the ruling as a “victory for consumers, interoperability and computing”. “The decision gives legal certainty to the next generation of developers whose new products and services will benefit consumers,” wrote Walker.
Oracle’s chief legal officer Dorian Daley condemned the result. “The Google platform just got bigger and market power increased. The barriers to entry are higher and competitiveness is lower. They stole Java and fought litigation like only a monopoly can for a decade, ”she wrote in a statement.
Oracle’s persistent prosecution of a case has been widely ridiculed by other technology companies as gross misuse of copyright law. They argued that it threatened to make it difficult for different computer programs to work together and could stifle innovation among startups that may not be able to pay royalties on some strands of coding.
Yale Law School’s Privacy Lab founder Sean O’Brien said that both amateur and professional software developers will now “sleep a little easier, without fears that innovation and collaboration will be handcuffed by new constraints “.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a large trade group, was among the technology voices celebrating the Supreme Court decision. The court ruling will also be welcome news for independent software developers, small startups, and others who are code-tinkering, said Tiffany Li, a visiting law professor at Boston University.
“This decision is unlikely to change the way startups and software developers work. It just kind of confirms how they’ve been working, ”Li said, adding that if Oracle had won it would have hurt a lot of developers as it would have been at odds with how the community is currently functioning.
The case is Google LLC v Oracle America Inc, 18-956.
