But the judge — who coincidentally wrote code as a hobby — ruled that the declaring code and SSO of the APIs were not covered by copyright after all. It was this specific ruling that was overturned by the Federal Circuit in Because the first jury had hung on fair use, an entirely new jury had to be convened for yet another trial on fair use in The jury sided with Google.
But in , the Federal Circuit — the same appeals court that in had sent the case back to the jury — ruled that the jury verdict had to be set aside in favor of Oracle, because the evidence presented at trial clearly indicated that no fair use determination could be reached, and therefore should not have gone to a jury in the first place.
Unfortunately the real heart of the case lies in the part with all the math and such. This decade-long grudge match between Google and Oracle is not an entirely rational one. This is not to say that copy-pasting is the heart of Silicon Valley. But there is a point at which you want to encourage things to look the same, rather than to be different for the sake of difference.
To put things roughly: coding is the process of speaking to the machine. But very few people who develop software in this day and age actually speak directly to the machine. Software exists in layers upon iterative layers, a game of whispers that eventually reaches the bare metal of the computer. New languages are derived from the old; new libraries are built on existing ones; dependencies are stacked on top of each other like a game of Jenga that is about to end at any moment.
And Google v. Oracle is a case that is happening at one of the lowest levels of an ongoing game of Jenga. Correction: An earlier version of the article misstated that the Android code base was billions of lines of code.
It is in the millions. We regret the error. Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Cybersecurity Mobile Policy Privacy Scooters. Phones Laptops Headphones Cameras. Tablets Smartwatches Speakers Drones. Accessories Buying Guides How-tos Deals. Health Energy Environment. Google, meanwhile, painted the decision as a victory for the software industry as a whole. The majority of judges agreed that Google's copying of the Java code - in the particular way it was used - was "a fair use of that material".
But the judges disagreed on how to apply traditional copyright law to computer code. Justice Breyer, writing for the majority, acknowledged that it is "difficult to apply traditional copyright concepts in that technological world". But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that allowing fair use simply because it allows new products to be created effectively redefines the idea.
He also lamented that the majority had decided not to rule on whether code was copyrightable, instead saving the question for another day and relying on fair use instead. Google wins in Java fight with Oracle. On October 6, , Google filed a petition asking the U. Supreme Court to review the Federal Circuit's decision.
On November 7, , EFF filed an amicus brief on behalf of many computer scientists that asked the Supreme Court to grant Google's petition for review, reverse the Federal Circuit, and reinstate Judge Alsup's opinion. Unfortunately, in June the Supreme Court denied Google's petition.
The case returned to the district court for a trial on Google's fair use defense. Oracle filed another appeal. However, in March , the Federal Circuit reversed the district court again, in a decision that made even less sense than its opinion. The Court rejected the jury's verdict after previously saying that the jury had to decide the case , and held that Google's use was not a fair use as a matter of law.
Google petitioned the entire Court to rehear the case, and EFF filed an amicus brief supporting Google's petition. The Federal Circuit denied Google's petition in August In January , Google filed another petition asking the U.
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