Google has won the latest round in its long-running battle with Oracle over the use of Java class library APIs in Android.

A San Francisco jury today found that Google’s reuse of Java’s core software interfaces in its own mobile operating system should be considered Fair Use – meaning Google can avoid paying royalties to Oracle.

The unanimous decision blows away an earlier finding in favor of Oracle and protects Google from having to pay out potentially nearly $10bn in damages. In January, Oracle revealed in court that Google has banked $31bn in sales and $22bn in profit from Android since it launched in 2008 – figures Google fought fiercely to keep secret.

Way back in 2010, Oracle sued Google for copyright infringement, accusing the search kingpin of ripping off Oracle’s Java language APIs for its Android platform without paying a dime for the designs. Oracle acquired Java when it bought Sun Microsystems that year.

Last year, Oracle successfully argued that it can copyright its software interfaces – not just its software, but the way Java’s core library code interfaces with applications: the function names, parameters, and so on. Google’s Java implementation was initially based on the open-source Apache Harmony, though early on Oracle reckoned the web giant had lifted pages of header files from Oracle’s copyrighted source to craft Android.

Eventually, a trial jury deadlocked on whether or not Android’s infringement of Oracle’s copyright constituted Fair Use, thus punting the brouhaha into this month for another round of legal arguments. In the background to this, Google has been lining up the open-source OpenJDK Java class libraries for future Android builds so it can ditch its Harmony-derived code. Who oversees OpenJDK? Why, Oracle, of course – which still wants money from earlier releases of Google’s mobile OS regardless of whatever development kit it’s using today.

On Thursday this week, after fewer than four days of deliberation, a jury decided, with the flick of a pen, that it is fair for Android to lift Oracle’s API designs.

 

Source:Bloomberg.