MFT Nation has been following the long-running copyright court battle over Google’s use of Oracle’s Java APIs in the Android software that runs most of the world’s smartphones. Hopefully, the court battle has ended as a U.S. jury found unanimously that Google’s use of Oracle’s Java APIs was protected under the fair-use provision of copyright law.
Oracle said it has “many” grounds to appeal, so it may not view the jury’s decision as the final fight. “We strongly believe that Google developed Android by illegally copying core Java technology to rush into the mobile device market,” Oracle General Counsel Dorian Daley said in a statement.
The trial was closely watched by software developers, who feared an Oracle victory could spur more software copyright lawsuits. Google relied on high-profile witnesses like Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt to convince jurors it used Java to create its own innovative product, rather than steal another company’s intellectual property, as Oracle claimed.
