Supreme Court denies Google's appeal on Oracle's lawsuit against them

The United States Supreme Court just shut down Google's appeal to throw out a copyright lawsuit filed against the search engine giant by Oracle. 

Oracle's lawsuit alleges that the Android mobile operating system infringes on Oracle's Java software language. In their appeal, Google requested that the Supreme Court revisit and earlier federal appeals decision in 2014 that decided that application programming interfaces (APIs) used in java by Google were covered by their own copyright protections. This ruling reversed a 2012 decision that decided that APIs were not, in fact, protected under copyright.

In addition to asking for this revisitation, Google wanted the Supreme Court to place limits on the extent to which software makers could use copyright law to gain exclusive rights to their programs, claiming that granting ownership of basic software commands to a company would hamstring progress and make it dangerous to develop new ideas and expand upon older ones.

Following the Supreme Court's denial, the case will be tried in a federal court in San Francisco. If Google winds up losing its case, it's unknown what impact it would have on both the company as a whole and their Android OS. Beyond that, a ruling in favor of Oracle would shock the software industry to its core, and have far reaching consequences to a vast majority of modern software.

No matter where you are with your company, it's important to contact a skilled business attorney as soon as possible. A lawyer can help protect your rights in case of litigation, and get you just compensation.

Categorised in: Business Law

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