After 11 years of proceedings, specifically after three trials and two appeals, the United States Supreme Court , considered the highest court in this country, ruled a few days ago on the conflict between Oracle and Google , when the former accused the second of having violated its intellectual property right on the Java code that Google used to create its mobile operating system (the popular Android).
Not in vain, two courts of first instance had ruled in favor of Google, but a federal application court took the opposite direction in 2018, opening the door to the possible payment of a fine, pressuring Google to make the decision to appeal. to the Supreme Court.
Thus, on April 5, we finally learned that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Google , the popular and well-known Mountain View firm, with a solemn vote of 6 votes to two, ruling that copying part of the Java API code would not infringes on Oracle’s copyright , representing fair use.
11,500 lines of code and claim for a $ 9 billion fine
Specifically, in its judgment, the Court declared that Google had copied about 11,500 lines of Java SE code , specifically the Java API, in order to work on Android development. However, this originally accounted for just 0.4 percent of the entire API in question, made up of 2.86 million lines of code.
This code was originally owned by Sun Microsystems, a company that was acquired by Oracle in 2010. Thus, according to the jurists, Google would have only taken what was necessary to allow developers to put all their talent at the service of an “innovative program ”.
What’s more, since Google used parts of the Java API to create a new platform that programmers could easily use, its use was consistent with this “creative breakthrough,” not in itself plagiarizing. Despite the fact that Android is an operating system used by billions of mobile devices around the world.
The use of those around 11,500 lines of code that, originally, were part of the Java platform code created by Sun Microsystems was what motivated Oracle to decide to sue Google for damages, also demanding the payment of 9.3 billion dollars, considering that Android violated the copyright of Java.
Despite all this, the court has not clearly decided whether or not the various programming interfaces should be protected by copyright, since the Court avoided answering that main question. That is, it did not rule on the issue of copyright protection of Oracle’s code statement.
According to Judge Stephen Breyer , “Given rapidly changing technological, economic and business circumstances, we believe that we should not respond more than is necessary to resolve the dispute between the parties. The fact that computer programs are primarily functional makes it difficult to apply traditional copyright concepts in this technological context. “
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Clarence Tomas believes that this use, which the Supreme Court considered “fair”, could really be questioned when it allows the creation of new products .
However, experts in intellectual property issues, such as John Bergmayer, of the Public Knowledge organization, the Supreme Court would have made the correct decision.
In fact, both Google itself and several of its allies in Silicon Valley have argued for years that the idea of extending the notion of copyright to APIs would constitute a serious threat to digital innovation.
