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Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc.

The most trending and endless lawsuit of copyright and
patent claims has again hinged at the judgment of the
federal appeals court of United States. The judgement
stated that Google had violated the copyrights of
Oracle when it made the custom version of Java platform
i.e. API (Application Programming Interface) which is
used for building software applications with the help
of routines, protocols and tools and use to facilitate
communication between various software components, for
its Android operating system.

This case started in 2010 by Oracle after it acquired

the Sun Microsystem (the company which originally built
the Java Language and the platform). Where Google used
the Java language and its API in a cleanroom version.
Oracle filed a lawsuit claiming infringement of both
copyright and patent.

The district court in 2012 ruled that the APIs are not
copyrightable. And that was overturned by the appeals
court to decide by the jury that the Google’s use of
Java APIs is within the ambit of “fair use” under the
law.

In 2016, Jury gave its decision in the favour of

Google. Oracle appealed against the decision of the
jury and then the appeals court gave the decision
against Google ruling that Google violated the
copyrights of Oracle

Background
Sun microsystem originally developed Java in 1990,
which was an Object-Oriented language. It runs with a
principle of “Write Once Run Anywhere” which means it
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needs to be written just once, which can be run on
different platforms without making changes in the Java
program. Only the Java interpreter is changed depending
upon the platform. Google purchased Android in 2005 and
started developing its Android operating system which
included the use of Java language and API also, by
using it in a cleanroom version for its own Android
platform. Google decided to take the Java API’s
instructions for how to program all that code that does
the parsing and converting source code into object code
themselves, and they did it in a cleanroom environment,
so that Oracle’s code is not included in it, yet the
API has remained the same as the Java apps would not
work without the same API. Prior to this Google and Sun
Microsystem were initiated to deal for the license. But
due to disagreement on the conditions of both the
parties, the deal failed to arrive at a decision and
Google failed to get the Java license.

Later in 2010, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystem for US$

7.4 billion and it continued developing Java and
pursued licensing opportunities and in the same year,
it filed a lawsuit claiming both copyright and patent
violation on Google.

Trial Phase
Phase 1
The first district court trial tried by the District
Court for the Northern District of California in 2010,
when Google was sued by Oracle for patent and copyright
violation. Oracle accused Google of being aware of
their Android developing without a Java license and
also illegally copied its APIs which were 37 in number
and hence created the infringement of copyright. Oracle
sued for both pecuniary damages as well as an
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injunction to use the claimed materials by Google.

The Jury in 2012 ascertains that the copyrights of

Oracle has been infringed by Google related to code,
structure, sequence, organization, APIs and also range
check function but still it was a question that whether
it was within the ambit of fair use or not.

The same Jury also decided the patent claims which

comprised claim for two patents:

US6061520A- method and system for performing static

initialization, and
USRE38104E1- method and apparatus for resolving data
references
And here the Jury didn’t found infringement in any of
the patent claims.

This case was handed over to Judge Alsup who himself

learned the Java language to better understand the
technicalities of this case and he related the Java
language to a ‘bookshelf’. The final verdict given by
Judge Alsup was that “anyone is free under the
Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out
exactly the same function or specification of any
methods used in the Java API”.

Appeal filed by Oracle

Oracle filed an appeal against the decision of District
Court which was assigned to the United States Court of
Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The court keeping in
mind the Copyrights Act in mind concluded that “the
overall structure of Oracle’s API packages is creative,
original and resembles a taxonomy”. Therefore the Court
held that the SSO (Structure, Sequence and
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Organization) of an API is copyrightable.

The Appeals Court remanded the case to the District

Court for Second Trial and to get the matter of ‘fair
use’ concluded.

In 2014 Google filed a petition in Supreme Court to

hear the case which was denied by the Supreme Court in
2015.

Phase 2
The appeals court remanded the case to the District
Court to start a new trial on the matter of “fair use”.
Again the Jury found out that the Google didn’t
infringe Oracle’s copyright as the use of Java’s API
were under the ambit of fair use.

As against to the verdict of Jury, Oracle filed an

appeal in 2016. The appeal was heard by the United
States Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit.

The Appeals court came on a verdict that the fact that

Google has copied the copyrighted API packages and also
it copied the SSO (structure, sequence and
organization) of Java API packages. The Court found out
that Google didn’t follow the prescribed criteria of
fair use and hence it doesn’t come under the ambit of
fair use and was just a non-transformed reuse. It was
pointed that “the fact that Android is free of charge
does not make Google’s use of Java API packages
noncommercial”. And in the counterpart, Oracle charges
a fee for licensing its API for who wants to use it and
also imposes strict parameters on licensees.

And the situation created huge damages to Oracle and

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hence Court found it commercial and was not fair use.
The Appeals Court ruled in the favour of Oracle and
remanded the case to the District Court of Northern
District of California to decide that how much of
pecuniary damages shall be paid by Google to Oracle.

Violation of Oracle’s copyright

Now the main question arises that whether the use of
Java infringes the copyright of Oracle or not?

In the U.S. to copyright a work there should be two

parameters to be fulfilled which are as follows:

It has to be work of requisite level of creativity.

It has to be fixed into a tangible medium of
expression.
As far as computer programs are concerned they are
under the definition of literary works as under the
Copyrights Act of U.S.

Copying of both literal as well as non-literal elements

of a computer program are prohibited from copying, it
also includes SSO of the program.

Terms of Free and Open Source Licenses are also

enforced through Copyright law.

Oracle allowed the use of java freely to the developers

but licensed it to a certain including in mobile
devices. Google used Java language including its API to
develop its Android operating system which had to
compete with iOS which already have been on the market
for few years.

Here Oracle sued Google as soon as its acquisition of

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Sun Microsystem regarding copyright and patent claims.
And Google claimed that it was unaware of any patent
infringements and that its use of freely available
API’s was within fair use.

Jury decided in the favour of Google. But the Jury

didn’t give a final verdict on the matter of “fair
use”.

The appellate court gave the decision in favour of

Oracle. And concluded that the use of Java language and
its API package is not under the attributes of fair
use.

Taking the Copyrights Act and the context of fair use

into consideration it can be said that Google has
violated the copyrights and patents of Oracle. Though
Sun Microsystem didn’t show any obligation on the use
of Java by Google but Oracle as soon as it acquired Sun
Microsystem it sued Google as it used the Java for
commercial purpose and the Android Operating System was
a competing product.

Conclusion
An almost a decade-long Tech-War which seems to have
been arrived at a decision now. Though Google can
approach Supreme Court against the decision so arrived
by the Appellate Court.

This lawsuit has also been criticized by many people

around the world, most of them are found saying that
Google could have licensed Java at much lesser cost
than his legal expenses which it spent over years.

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