Fair use or "first excuse"? Oracle v. Google goes to the jury (ars technica)

The first phase of Oracle's lawsuit over the use of Java in Android has gone to the jury ars technica reports. The question in the first phase is whether 37 Java APIs were illegally copied by Google into Android, though there are some other issues as well. "Oracle is "not even in the ballpark" when it comes to proving similarities between the 37 Java APIs it claims ownership of, and Android's own APIs. And, he [defense lawyer Robert Van Nest] emphasized, Oracle isn't accusing Google of copying code—because it can't. After designing a computer program to analyze Android's millions of lines of code, Oracle found only nine lines of copied code in a function called rangeCheck(). That code, accidentally inserted by a Google engineer who testified last week, has been removed from all current versions of Android. "Other than the nine lines of code in rangecheck, everything in Android is original," said Van Nest—created entirely by Google engineers, or with Apache open source code." The verdict is expected later this week, but the judge has reserved the right to determine that the APIs aren't copyrightable, which could potentially overturn the jury's decision.

Comments (45 posted)