Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Google-Oracle Copyright Case

The Supreme Court agreed to hear Google’s appeal of a ruling that it illegally copied Oracle’s programming code in Android (see 1903280061, docket 18-956). Oracle sued Google in 2010, claiming Google violated copyright law by using about 11,000 lines of Java programming code. Google claimed fair use. Oracle, which won a federal appeals court decision in 2018, is seeking some $9 billion in damages. Oracle is confident the high court “will preserve long established copyright protections for original software and reject Google’s continuing efforts to avoid responsibility for copying Oracle’s innovations,” a spokesperson emailed Friday. “We believe the Court will reject any reasoning that permits copying verbatim vast amounts of software code, used for the same purpose and same way as the original.” Google hopes the high court “reaffirms the importance of software interoperability in American competitiveness,” wrote Senior Vice President-Global Affairs Kent Walker. “Developers should be able to create applications across platforms and not be locked into one company's software.”