Ninth Circuit Report

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 46 No. 2
• Publication year: 2021
• topic: Business of Law,Patent law,Intellectual Property,Copyright law,Federal,Technology

Ninth Circuit Report

Anne-Marie Dao

Troutman Sanders LLP

GOOGLE V. ORACLE UPDATE

Happy Summer, Ninth Circuit report readers! Hopefully this is one of the last times I will write that I hope everyone is staying safe (and I do hope you all are). This issue gives a long-awaited update on Google v. Oracle. As you may recall, oral argument, which was to occur March 24, 2020 was delayed until October 7, 2020. The Supreme Court just rendered its opinion on (1) whether copyright protection extends to a software interface; and (2) whether, as the jury found, the petitioner's use of a software interface in the context of creating a new computer program constitutes fair use.

Brief Background

This case is described as the "copyright lawsuit of the decade."¹ In this lawsuit, the two questions presented by Google are: 1) whether copyright protection extends to a software interface; and 2) whether, as the jury found, petitioner's use of a software interface in the context of creating a new computer program constitutes fair use.² As described by Google, the crux of the issue between the technology giants was:

Sun Microsystems originally developed the Java platform, which includes the free Java programming language. The software interfaces at issue are part of the Java language's application programming interface (API). Sun encouraged developers to learn the Java language by touting the ability to use software interfaces—also known as "the Java API declarations"—to access preexisting libraries of code used to perform particular tasks. The interfaces thereby facilitated development of programs in the Java language.
Google used some of the Java API declarations to build Android, a revolutionary platform for modern mobile devices such as smart-phones and tablets. Google incorporated those declarations to allow developers to write applications for Android using the Java language. Sun originally applauded Google for using the Java language. But after Oracle acquired Sun, it sued Google for copyright infringement.³

Oracle presented the issues to be considered by the Supreme Court of the United States as:

1. Does the Copyright Act protect Oracle's computer source code that Google concedes was original and creative and that Oracle could have written in any number of ways to perform the same function?
2. Was the Court of Appeals correct in holding that it is not fair use as a matter of law for Google to copy Oracle's code into a competing commercial platform for the purpose of appealing to Oracle's fanbase, where Google could have written its own software platform without copying, and Google's copying substantially harmed the actual and potential markets for...