Judge limits Google's liability in Oracle Java case

Result of latest round in Google versus Oracle far from clear cut

The result of the latest round of the legal action between Oracle and Google is far from clear-cut. However, while the jury decided that Google did infringe Oracle copyrights covering Java application programming interfaces (APIs) in the Android mobile operating system, it was undecided over whether this constituted ‘fair use'.

Google followed up by asking Judge William Alsup to declare a mistrial. It argued that the matter of copyright infringement could not be decided without also making a definitive judgment on fair use. Therefore, the trial could not proceed, according to Google.

Oracle, meanwhile, sought to force the issue by filing a motion asking Judge Alsup to rule that Google's use of Java APIs went beyond fair use.

Judge Alsup said that he would rule on Google's request for a mistrial next week, but argued on Oracle's motion that it would have to live with the decision that the jury had reached.

As a result, Oracle's scope in this trial for claiming damages from Google – which it might use as leverage for a wider settlement involving Java and Android – will be limited to just the nine lines of code.

These, the jury has decided, had been copied from Java to the Dalvik virtual machine, the "clean room" implementation of Java that the Android operating system is based on.

This corrects a story published on Thursday 10 May 2012, which incorrectly reported that the Judge had ruled on the issue. Computing apologises for the error.