![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1164\/2021\/04\/Google_phone.jpg\")
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Google and Oracle have been involved in a legal dispute since the mid aughts.\u00a0 Back in 2005, Google acquired Android in order to build a new software platform for mobile devices, such as phones and tablets.\u00a0 In order to make development relatively easy for their developers, Google copied over 11,000 lines of Sun\u2019s Java SE code that would become part of the Application Programming Interface (API).\u00a0 Oracle acquired Sun a few years later, and sued Google with the argument that Google had infringed upon Sun\u2019s copyrights.<\/p>\n
During the extensive litigation, two major considerations from the lower courts were whether the owner of Java SE could copyright the copied lines of code from the API and whether Google\u2019s copying of the 11,000 lines of code constituted a permissible \u201cfair use\u201d.\u00a0 Over the better part of a decade, Google won at the trial court level twice, but each time, the ruling was overruled at the Federal Circuit appeals court level.<\/p>\n
In 2020, the case reached the Supreme Court.\u00a0 At the Supreme Court, it was determined that Google\u2019s copy of the Java code was indeed permissible as \u201cfair use\u201d. Per copyright.gov, Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes the freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances.\u00a0 Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for fair use and calls for the consideration of four factors when considering whether the fair use doctrine is applicable.\u00a0 These four factors include the following:<\/p>\n
While the Supreme Court determined that fair use doctrine applied to this case, no substantial decision was made regarding APIs may be copyrighted.\u00a0 Though it should be noted that Justice Breyer, who issued the majority opinion, designated API as one that provides an \u201corganizational function\u201d. This determination puts API very close to being a \u201csystem\u201d, which cannot be copyrighted on the spectrum of copyrightable materials. However, the Supreme Court\u2019s decision should make the question of copyrighting APIs less relevant as the decision should provide future market participants with a strong defense for API copying.<\/p>\n
Sources:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Google and Oracle have been involved in a legal dispute since the mid aughts.\u00a0 Back in 2005, Google acquired Android in order to build a new software platform for mobile devices, such as phones and tablets.\u00a0 In order to make development relatively easy for their developers, Google copied over 11,000 lines of Sun\u2019s Java SE […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2042,"featured_media":1832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1829"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1848,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions\/1848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/legaldatadesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}