Patent Lessons From The Google v. Oracle API Dispute

The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) recently issued a landmark copyright decision in Google LLC v Oracle America, Inc. finding that Google was not liable for copyright infringement when it copied 11,500 lines of code from Oracle's Java SE computer program. The Court did not specifically rule on the copyrightability of Oracle's asserted code. Instead, the Court's decision was based on its finding that Google's actions were "fair use" of the asserted copyrighted code.

The copied lines of code were part of the so-called "declaring code" of the Java Application Programming Interface (API). The declaring code is pre-written code, from the API's library, that is used to initiate complex tasks performed via the API. Notably, in developing the Android platform, Google created its own implementing code. However, Google copied the Java API declaring code for 37 packages to facilitate uptake by programmers who were already familiar with the Java programming language,