Courts Issue Multiple Decisions Restating Scope Of Copyright Fair Use

The extent of the right to make "fair use" of another's copyrighted materials is the subject of two important new decisions, one from the U.S. Supreme Court and another from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, issued within days of each other. Between them, these decisions mark notable developments in copyright law and will have significant impact on the computer software industry and the market for fine art in particular.

First, the Supreme Court's April 5, 2021 ruling overturns Oracle's wide-ranging judgment against Google for unauthorized use of Oracle's Java programming language. The Supreme Court assumed that copyright may protect certain commands in "Application Programming Interfaces" ("APIs") as "literary" works, but agreed with Google that the disputed uses of those commands were protected "fair uses" of that copyrighted material. The Supreme Court, which last ruled on the scope of "fair use" thirty years ago, seemed convinced that the interoperability of