The Supreme Court issued a ruling in favor of Google in the decade-old software copyright case in US. The ruling declares that copying of the API from Oracle’s Java is a fair use. This decision has been issued after a court voting of 6-2 in favor of Google.
The dispute between the two giant companies began a decade ago when Oracle argued that Google copied snippets of Oracle’s Java programming language to build Google’s Android operating system. Oracle stated at that time that Google should pay $9 billion to Oracle because of the alleged copyright violation.
According to reports, Justice Breyer of the US Supreme Court said that while it is difficult to apply traditional copyright concepts in the context of software programming, Google copied “only what was needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program”. The justices of the US Supreme Court stated that “Oracle’s code at issue here is copyrightable, and Google’s use of that copyrighted code was anything but fair“.
After the decision is issued, Google said that the Court’s decision “is a victory for consumers and computer science” while Oracle reiterated that Google “stole Java code”.
Also, it is mentioned by many people that the Court’s decision is not very clear at the point whether APIs are copyrightable or not.
In any case, it seems that this decision is a clear victory for Google and for its Android system.