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“World Series of IP” has a winner
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: April 30, 2021
The 12-year marathon case of Google v. Oracle is over. And the winner is… Google, whom the U.S. Supreme Court ruled did not violate copyright law by using software developed by Oracle and subsequently used by Google in constructing Google’s Android smartphone operating system.
The case was dubbed “The World Series of IP cases” in 2012 by U.S. District Judge William Alsop when it was first tried. Professor Mark Lemly called it the “copyright case of the century.” Google had won twice at trial but had lost twice on appeal. Now, the Supreme Court has permanently settled it.
The court ruled in Google’s favor by a 6 to 2 margin (the case was argued before Justice Amy Coney Barrett had been seated). Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent. The majority ruled that Google’s use of the bits of code called APIs was a “fair use” of copyrighted material.
At issue were application programming interfaces (APIs) consisting of 11,500 lines of code broken down into 37 packets. An API is a shorthand code used to access libraries of already-existing code when constructing new software (so that programmers don’t have to constantly re-invent the wheel). At their most basic, they are the connectors between a program and a platform—for instance, between an optical character reader (OCR) and an AI platform. Or how PayPal communicates with your bank account without PayPal having to write new code for each account.
The court ruled, essentially, that APIs are so commonplace and so necessary to the workings of modern technology that they constitute a de facto fair use case. In the ruling, the Justices said that fair use has "an important role to play for computer programs by providing a context-based check that keeps the copyright monopoly afforded to computer programs within its lawful bounds."
"We reach the conclusion that in this case, where Google reimplemented a user interface, taking only what was needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, Google's copying of the Sun Java API was a fair use of that material as a matter of law," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the majority opinion.
Virtually every advocate on the side of a free and open Internet applauded the decision. In the simplest terms, said one expert, the decision “gives certainty to the next generation of developers” that anyone can use APIs—little bits of code that allow the Internet to function as a commercial platform.