US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle [LWN.net]

US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

Posted Apr 6, 2021 1:30 UTC (Tue) by timrichardson (subscriber, #72836)
In reply to: US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle by bjartur
Parent article: US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

I am not any kind of lawyer. What I have gathered is that the code in question is copyrightable, but Google won under "fair use": there are certain circumstances where infringement of copyright is allowed. One of these circumstances is where the infringement of copyright is for a "transformative" purpose, and Google was found to be correct in its argument that its infringement was "transformative". In this sense, I don't think the case really makes new law because this is not a new concept.

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US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

Posted Apr 6, 2021 11:44 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Not quite; the court made no decision about whether or not the code in question is copyrightable, merely that fair use would cover the alleged infringements, and thus there's no reason to think about whether or not the code is copyrightable, because either it is, but fair use means no infringement, or it isn't and thus copyright cannot be infringed by Google's actions. Either way round, the result is that Google has obeyed the law.

US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

Posted Apr 6, 2021 15:03 UTC (Tue) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (3 responses)

The fair use test is actually a complex one. It's not a simple question of whether the copying falls into a bucket of allowed conduct. Instead, the court is supposed to consider multiple factors and decide how they balance each other. Those factors include:

The amount of copying, both absolute and relative to the whole work
How it's being used, i.e. commercial or non-profit
Whether the copied work is likely to compete with the original
Whether the copying is transformative

In this case, the amount of copying is small, both in absolute amount and relative to the total size of the project, it's used commercially, the court determined it's not likely to compete with the original, and the use was considered to be transformative. Based on that, the court decided it was fair use. But they easily could have decided otherwise if they felt it was likely to compete with Java. I'm not sure the decision was correct- I think it really is competing with Java- but deciding on fair use let the court sidestep the question of whether the code was copyrightable at all.

US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

Posted Apr 7, 2021 5:51 UTC (Wed) by gfernandes (subscriber, #119910) [Link] (2 responses)

Everyone has their own perspective /opinion. Having said that, there is no way you can regard the use of a java like language and API for programming Android, as competing with java.

Sun tried from the very beginning, to get java into mobile phones. And failed. Miserably.

So the value add of Android is the transformative use of the java API, clubbed with a Linux kernel, and a custom user land layer.

Don't forget that.

Java, by itself, only ever managed to conquer the server.

US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

Posted Apr 7, 2021 12:59 UTC (Wed) by plugwash (subscriber, #29694) [Link] (1 responses)

> Sun tried from the very beginning, to get java into mobile phones. And failed. Miserably.

There was a time, before the iphone and andriod took over the world, when J2ME support on phones was not uncommon.

Would android still have taken over the smartphone world if it had not used the Java programming language and APIs? If not would J2ME still be a thing? I doubt anyone really knows.

US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

Posted Apr 8, 2021 18:36 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

If Android would have actually supported J2ME then it would have been an open question.

As it is it's pretty obvious that Sun's mobile efforts were largely irrelevant.

Java was used in Android because it was taught in colleges, essentially, not because J2ME was ever viable.

US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

Posted Apr 11, 2021 16:05 UTC (Sun) by mina86 (guest, #68442) [Link]

> there are certain circumstances where infringement of copyright is allowed

This is a bit of technicality, but if one operates within fair use doctrine, they do not infringe copyright. In other words, fair use is not a defence in copyright infringement cases, it’s a right everyone has and if it applies than there’s no infringement.