By Brent Kendall And Shira Ovide
WASHINGTON--The Supreme Court on Monday denied a Google Inc.
appeal that sought to stop a billion-dollar Oracle Corp. lawsuit by
seeking limits on software copyright protections.
The high court's move is the latest development in a case dating
back to 2010, when Oracle alleged Google's Android smartphone
operating system infringed its copyrights to its Java platform.
The justices, without comment, declined to disturb a May 2014
appeals court ruling in Oracle's favor that reinvigorated the
company's case against Google. The appeals court, overruling a
trial judge, said 37 packages of prewritten Java programs, known as
application programming interfaces or APIs, were entitled to
copyright protection.
The decision is a win for Oracle, which sells corporate
databases and owns Java, a widely used software-programming
language. Oracle had fought vigorously the idea that Google or any
other company should be allowed to use any part of Java in software
or apps without paying Oracle a fee. Each side had said a win for
its opponent would seriously impede innovation.
The case had been closely watched in the tech industry because
it centered on the ability to copyright APIs, an increasingly
prevalent way for different software programs to interact with one
another. The 2014 ruling asserted that APIs can, indeed, be
copyrighted. However, it left unsettled Google's separate argument
that, even if the Java APIs were subject to copyright, it could use
its APIs under copyright law's provision for fair use--so the legal
wrangling in the case is by no means over.
In the case, Oracle has sought more than $1 billion in damages.
A jury originally held that Google infringed the Oracle copyrights,
but it deadlocked on Google's defense that its copying amounted to
fair use. That issue will have to be retried in a lower court.
Google had asked the Supreme Court to hear the case and limit
how software makers could use copyright law to assert exclusive
rights over computer programs. It argued Oracle shouldn't be able
to claim copyrights on basic software commands.
Oracle said its computer code was original and creative, and
argued that Google's position would undermine important legal
protections for software. It said Google should have paid for a
license or written all of its own code separately.
The Supreme Court showed some initial interest in the case,
asking the Obama administration for its views on whether the court
should intervene.
U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli responded with a brief
that urged the court to sidestep the case, particularly because the
fair-use issue hadn't been resolved in the lower court. Mr.
Verrilli also said one of Google's key arguments against copyrights
on the Java packages was without merit.
A Google spokesman said, "We will continue to defend the
interoperability that has fostered innovation and competition in
the software industry."
Oracle General Counsel Dorian Daley said the high court's action
"is a win for innovation and for the technology industry that
relies on copyright protection to fuel innovation."
Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com and Shira Ovide
at shira.ovide@wsj.com
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