Court Rules That Google Did Not Violate Oracle’s Copyright of Java API

Google received a favorable ruling last week when a judge stated that the search engine did not infringe on patents held by Oracle. The second blow to the case for Oracle came on Thursday, May 31 when the judge ruled that API’s are not copyrightable. This final statement has caused Oracle’s multi-billion dollar claims against Google to completely collapse.

The judgment related to copyright violations that Oracle claimed Google was guilty of was related to 37 Java APIs.  An API basically allows applications to interact with the operating system and Oracle claimed that Google was using its copyrights in their code for Android. The judge stated that “When there is only one way to express an idea or function, then everyone is free to do so and no one can monopolize that expression.”

The case has been a high profile battle that many observers have been watching closely. With the rise of mobile services and smartphone innovators and tech companies have been fighting out court battles for protection of patents. Previously no case relating to API had been heard making the results of the trial a major event in the industry.

Google and Oracle became embroiled in a pitched battle when Android, Google’s mobile device operating system, was created using Java. The programming language became the property of Oracle when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2009. Oracle claimed that for Google to use their property a licensing agreement needed to be signed and that the search engine would have to pay for each Android system being used. This would make this a very large sum of money because Android has become extremely popular and holds a dominant share of the mobile OS market.

Oracle has stated that it will appeal the decision because it destroys their ability to protect their innovation. However, supporters of the ruling believe that the court has given the green light to collaborative innovation.