America’s top judges decide copied code in Android is fair use
The US Supreme Court on Monday ruled in a 6-2 decision that Google’s limited copying of Oracle’s Java APIs in its Android operating system constitutes fair use under US law. The ruling puts an end to a case that troubled the software industry for more than a decade and narrows the scope of copyright law as it applies software. The court had two questions before it: whether software interfaces qualify for copyright protection and whether Google’s use of Oracle’s software interface code represents fair use, assuming the Java APIs can be copyrighted. Oracle filed its lawsuit against Google in 2010, claiming copyright and patent infringement for Google’s use of Java APIs in Android. In 2012, after the patent claims had been dismissed, US District Court Judge William Alsup ruled that Oracle’s Java APIs did not qualify for copyright protection. In 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit disagreed. Google then asked the Supreme Court to review the decision but its petition was denied. Following the appellate ruling that APIs are copyrightable, a new trial was held to determine whether Google’s use of Oracle’s Java API could be excused as fair use, a defense against infringement claims under copyright law. In 2016, a jury found that Google’s reuse of 37 Java APIs and 11,500 lines of copyrighted Oracle implementing code its Android operating system represented fair use. Oracle, however, appealed to the Federal Circuit and in 2018 the appeals court reversed the jury’s decision, ruling as a matter of law that Google could not avail itself of the fair use defense because its Android implementation of the Java APIs didn’t meet the four legal criteria for fair use. For assessing fair use, Copyright law requires consideration of: the purpose and character of the usage; the nature of the work; the proportion of the copied work in relation to the original; and the effect the copy has on the market for the original. Thus the case was sent back to the trial judge to determine damages, which had been estimated at about $9bn. In 2019, Google appealed again to the Supreme Court and its petition this time was accepted. On Monday, six justices sided with Google – Breyer, Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh – and two – Thomas and Alito – dissented, with Justice Barrett not taking part in the decision. « Google’s copying of the Java SE API, which included only those lines of code that were needed to allow programmers to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, was a fair use of that material as a matter of law, » the majority opinion [ PDF] says. Oracle, in a statement emailed to The Register, decried the ruling.
