The US Supreme Court gives Google a historic victory for the software industry, ruling that Mountain View has not infringed Oracle’s patents for the development of its Android operating system. The decision ends a 10-year legal battle in which Oracle was seeking $ 9 billion in damages for the illegal use of some of its software interfaces. But Google, according to American sages, “did not violate copyright law” by copying some of Java’s APIs, ie libraries that allow developers to write programs capable of working on different software platforms.
For the Supreme Court – which voted with six votes in favor and two against, those of the conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – Google has in fact used “only those codes necessary for programmers” to allow them to work on a new program. The essays therefore did not go into the specifics of the copyright of the interfaces believing that “it was not necessary to solve the case” and leaving a key issue for the software industry unresolved.
Indeed, many developers believe that the Oracle v Google case clearly shows the need for greater clarity on the legal status of interfaces, which are widely copied within the industry. Mountain View welcomes the Supreme Court’s decision as a “victory for consumers and interoperability” as it offers “legal certainty to the next generation of developers whose new products and services will benefit consumers.”
Critical is the reaction of Oracle, which accused Google of illegally copying 11,000 lines of Java API code to develop Android, the operating system that powers more than two billion mobile devices in the world. “Google has gotten bigger and more powerful. They stole Java and spent a decade fighting as only a monopolist can. This behavior shows why regulators in the US and around the world are scrutinizing Google’s business practices.” , observes Oracle, which bought Java from Sun Microsystem in 2010. Words that are echoed by several observers, according to which the case raises the issue of the balance of power between large platforms and their rivals in the software industry.