Judge hands Google victory in Oracle copyright fight

| June 1, 2012

 judge_hands_google_victory_postnoon_news

SAN FRANCISCO: A federal judge on Thursday put a stake in the heart of Oracle’s big-money lawsuit against Google by ruling that the application programming interfaces (APIs) at issue can’t be copyrighted.

The decision by US District Court Judge William Alsup came a week after a trial ended with jurors clearing Google of patent and copyright abuse charges leveled by the California business software titan.

Jurors ruled that Google violated copyrights owned by Oracle Corp. for the Android mobile platform but were unable to decide on a key point of whether Google’s use of the Java software was “fair use” that made it acceptable.Alsup had told the jurors to assume, for the sake of deliberations, that APIs could be copyrighted but reserved for himself the right to make the legal decision in that regard.

Oracle accused Google of infringing on Java computer programming language patents and copyrights Oracle obtained when it bought Java inventor Sun Microsystems in a $7.4 billion deal in 2009.Google denied the claims and said it believes mobile phone makers and other users of its open-source Android operating system are entitled to use the Java technology in dispute.

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