Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.

Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 7, 2020 Decided April 5, 2021
Full case name	Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.
Docket no.	18-956
Citations	593 U.S. ___ (more) 141 S. Ct. 1183 209 L. Ed. 2d 311
Argument	Oral argument
Decision	Opinion
Case history
Prior	Oracle Am., Inc. v. Google Inc., 872 F. Supp. 2d 974 (N.D. Cal. 2012); reversed and remanded, 750 F.3d 3303 (Fed. Cir. 2014); cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 2887 (2015) Oracle Am., Inc. v. Google Inc., No. 3:10-cv-03561, 2016 WL 1647639 (Sept. 27, 2016); reversed, 886 F.3d 1179 (Fed. Cir. 2018); cert. granted, 140 S. Ct. 520 (2019)
Subsequent	On remand, Oracle Am., Inc. v. Google LLC, No. 2017-1118, 2021 WL 1941874 (Fed. Cir. May 14, 2021)
Questions presented
Whether copyright protection extends to a software interface. Whether, as the jury found, petitioner's use of a software interface in the context of creating a new computer program constitutes fair use.
Holding
Google's copying of the Java SE API, which included only those lines of code that were needed to allow programmers to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, was a fair use of that material as a matter of law. Federal Circuit reversed.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Clarence Thomas · Stephen Breyer Samuel Alito · Sonia Sotomayor Elena Kagan · Neil Gorsuch Brett Kavanaugh · Amy Coney Barrett
Case opinions
Majority	Breyer, joined by Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh
Dissent	Thomas, joined by Alito
Barrett took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., 593 U.S. ___ (2021),^[1] was a U.S. Supreme Court decision related to the nature of computer code and copyright law. The dispute centered on the use of parts of the Java programming language's application programming interfaces (APIs) and about 11,000 lines of source code, which are owned by Oracle (through subsidiary, Oracle America, Inc., originating from Sun Microsystems), within early versions of the Android operating system by Google. Google has since transitioned Android to a copyright-unburdened engine without the source code, and has admitted to using the APIs but claimed this was within fair use.

Oracle initiated the suit arguing that the APIs were copyrightable, seeking US$8.8 billion in damages from Google's sales and licensing of the earlier infringing versions of Android. While two District Court-level jury trials found in favor of Google, the Federal Circuit court reversed both decisions, holding that APIs are copyrightable and Google's use does not fall under fair use. Google successfully petitioned to the Supreme Court to hear the case in the 2019 term, focusing on the copyrightability of APIs and subsequent fair use; the case was delayed to the 2020 term due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6–2 decision that Google's use of the Java APIs fell within the four factors of fair use, bypassing the question on the copyrightability of the APIs. The decision reversed the Federal Circuit ruling and remanded the case for further review.

The case has been of significant interest within the tech and software industries, as numerous computer programs and software libraries, particularly in open source, are developed by recreating the functionality of APIs from commercial or competing products to aid developers in interoperability between different systems or platforms.