US Supreme Court to hear Oracle versus Google Java APIs case

Supreme Court set to hear Oracle argue its case against Google over Java APIs

Oracle and Google are set for yet-another re-run of their Java APIs intellectual property infringement case with Google's appeal set to be heard in the Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court sides with Oracle, as the Court of Appeals did, the outcome could seriously disrupt the software industry, particularly open-source software. Anyone who has ever coded an API could potentially claim copyright on it and demand compensation for its usage.

The case goes back more than nine years, to August 2010, when Oracle sued Google for copyright and patent infringement. It claimed that Google had developed Dalvik, its Java virtual machine for running apps on Android, and implemented it without purchasing a licence. Central to that case was Oracle's claim that Google had copied the Java APIs.

Oracle had come into ownership of the Java intellectual property following its April 2009 acquisition of Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion, a deal completed in January 2010. At the time, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison described the acquisition of Java as "the single most important software asset we have ever acquired".

In the initial case, heard in April and May 2012, the jury was somewhat divided, with it finding in favour of Oracle in terms of copyright infringement of the APIs, but Judge William Alsup determining that the APIs weren't copyrightable. Ultimately, Judge Alsup found in favour of Oracle on only a number of minor technical issues.

Oracle was granted leave to appeal the verdict, with Google filing a cross-appeal, with the case assigned to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

In its judgement in May 2014, the Court of Appeals rejected Judge Alsup's interpretation of the US Copyright Act as it applied to software, and ruled that the same tests of whether code is "creative [and] original" also applied to software.

A further trial was scheduled to determine, therefore, whether Google's usage of the Java APIs counted as ‘fair use'. This was heard in May 2016, with Oracle seeking damages of up to $9 billion. They jury found in Google's favour - that its re-implementation of 37 Java APIs was protected under the doctrine of fair use.

Naturally, Oracle filed an appeal.

This was heard in March 2018. Prior Oracle versus Google cases had established that APIs are copyrightable under US copyright law. This case focused solely on whether they could be copied or cloned under the doctrine of fair usage.

It found that Google's use of Java API code did not meet any of the criteria to count as fair use: It had not been ‘transformative'; it did not enable third-party interoperability; and, while Google had copied some 11,500 lines of code, only 170 were required to achieve its declared objective.

Google's argument that its use was "non-commercial" because it gave away Android for free was pretty much laughed out of court - "Google's arguments are without merit," the court ruled in a 50-page opinion.

The Supreme Court trial will be Google's last chance to prevent Oracle from demanding compensation and damages of up to $9 billion.

Google moved to replace Dalvik from Android 4.4 KitKat, removing it entirely from Android 5.0 Lollipop with ART, the Android Runtime.