On April 5, 2021, the US Supreme Court decided the long-running
and closely-watched case of Google v. Oracle, holding that it was a
fair use for Google to copy the "declaring code" from the
application program interface (API) of Oracle's Java SE
platform when implementing Java for Google's Android operating
system. The Court sidestepped the question of whether Oracle's
copyright protected such code at all, instead assuming that it did.
The Court then conducted a fair use analysis that, depending on
one's perspective, was either an "ordinary application of
copyright's limiting doctrines," or "wholly
inconsistent with the substantial protection Congress gave to
computer code." Although the Court went to great lengths to
cabin its holding to the very narrow type of code at issue, the
decision is sure to feature prominently in fair use analyses in
copyright infringement cases in the years to come.
