Oracle Corp won a legal victory against Google Inc
on Friday as a U.S. appeals court decided Oracle could copyright parts
of the Java programming language, which Google used to design its
Android smartphone operating system.
The case,
decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in
Washington, is being closely watched in Silicon Valley.
A
high-profile 2012 trial featured testimony from Oracle's chief
executive, Larry Ellison, and Google CEO Larry Page, and the legal
issues go to the heart of how tech companies protect their most valuable
intellectual property.
Google's Android operating system is the
world's best-selling smartphone platform. Oracle sued Google in 2010,
claiming that Google had improperly incorporated parts of Java into
Android. Oracle is seeking roughly $1 billion on its copyright claims.
A
San Francisco federal judge had decided that Oracle could not claim
copyright protection on parts of Java, but on Friday the three-judge
Federal Circuit panel reversed that ruling.
"We conclude that a
set of commands to instruct a computer to carry out desired operations
may contain expression that is eligible for copyright protection,"
Federal Circuit Judge Kathleen O'Malley wrote.
Pamela Samuelson, a
professor at University of California, Berkeley, School of Law who
wrote a brief supporting Google in the case, said the Federal Circuit's
decision means software companies now face uncertainty in determining
how to write interoperable computer programs that do not violate
copyright.
"What we have is a decision that will definitely shake up the software industry," said Samuelson.
But
Oracle attorney E. Joshua Rosenkranz said the law has always been clear
on these issues. "There's nothing at all astounding in what the Federal
Circuit did," he said.
Not the end of legal dispute
The
case examined whether computer language that connects programs - known
as application programming interfaces, or APIs - can be copyrighted. At
trial in San Francisco, Oracle said Google's Android trampled on its
rights to the structure of 37 Java APIs.
U.S. District Judge
William Alsup ruled that the Java APIs replicated by Google were not
subject to copyright protection and were free for all to use. The
Federal Circuit disagreed on Friday, ruled for Oracle and instructed the
lower court to reinstate a jury's finding of infringement as to 37 Java
API packages.
"We find that the district court failed to
distinguish between the threshold question of what is copyrightable -
which presents a low bar - and the scope of conduct that constitutes
infringing activity," O'Malley wrote.
The unanimous Federal
Circuit panel ordered further proceedings before Alsup to decide whether
Google's actions were protected under fair use.
Programmers could
still craft interoperable programs if the opinion stands, but lawyers
will have to be more involved in signing off on what is permissible,
said Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law.
"That's
really expensive and lawyers are not going to give yes or no answers,
and that's going to be stressful for everybody," Goldman said.
Google
had argued that software should only be allowed to be patented, not
copyrighted. However, O'Malley wrote that the Federal Circuit is bound
to respect copyright protection for software, "until either the Supreme
Court or Congress tells us otherwise."
Oracle General Counsel
Dorian Daley called the decision a "win" for an industry "that relies on
copyright protection to fuel innovation." Google said it set a
"damaging precedent for computer science and software development" and
was considering its options
© Thomson Reuters 2014
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