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 that 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 failed to
agree on whether damages should be awarded in the high-profile trial.
In a partial verdict, jurors were unable to
decide on a key point of whether Google's use of copyrighted 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's challenge of Google in court over copyrights was an unusual tactic being watched intently in Silicon Valley.
In the fast-paced land of Internet
innovation, it has been common for software writers to put their own
spins on APIs that mini-programs use to "talk" to one another.
Oracle argued, to a degree, that it held
copyrights to how the APIs worked even if different strings of code were
used to orchestrate the tasks.
"When there is only one way to express an
idea or function, then everyone is free to do so and no one can
monopolize that expression," Alsup said in his ruling.
"So long as the specific code used to
implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act
to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or
specification of any methods used in the Java API."
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.
Google unveiled the free Android operating system two years before Oracle bought Sun.
Jurors, and now the judge, have sided with Google in the case.
"The court's decision upholds the principle
that open and interoperable computer languages form an essential basis
for software development," Google said in an email response to an AFP
inquiry.
"It's a good day for collaboration and innovation."
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