Oracle sued Google in 2010 seeking more than one billion dollars
in damages alleging that Google's Android Smart Phone operating
system infringed its copyrights in the Java platform. In May 2012,
the trial judge ruled that Oracle's Java application program
interface (API) "plagiarized" by Google was not
copyrightable. On May 9, 2014, the Federal Circuit ruled in
Oracle's favor on the copyrightability issue, and remanded the
issue of fair use to the district court.
Following the decision, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
noted: "The implications of [the Federal Circuit's]
decision are significant, and dangerous. As we and others tried to
explain to the court, the freedom to reimplement and extend
existing APIs has been the key to competition and progress in both
hardware and software development. It made possible the emergence
and success of many robust industries we now take for
granted—for mainframes, PCs, workstations/servers, and so
on—by ensuring that
