Oracle wins appeal in Google Java copyright case

Oracle has had a legal victory in its copyright infringement case against heavyweight Google, with a US appeals court deciding Oracle can copyright parts of Java.

Google uses Java in its Android smartphone operating system. Android is presently the world's top-selling smartphone system.

The decision was handed down on Friday by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington.

Observers in the computer industry are watching the developments closely.

In a 2012 trial, Google's CEO, Larry Page, and Oracle's CEO, Larry Ellison, went head to head with testimonies over intellectual property rights. Oracle had sued Google in 2010, saying the latter had infringed its copyright by incorporating sections of Java into Android. Oracle wants approximately US$1 billion in compensation.

But the appeal court's decision overturns that earlier court case, in which a San Francisco federal judge ruled that Oracle was not able to claim copyright protection on sections of Java.

"We conclude that a set of commands to instruct a computer to carry out desired operations may contain expression that is eligible for copyright protection," Federal Circuit Judge Kathleen O'Malley wrote.

The decision will leave software companies unsure about how to construct computer programs without violating copyright.

But Oracle says the situation is clear cut, with the company's attorney quoted as saying "There's nothing at all astounding" in the appeal court's decision.

The dispute

In the original San Francisco trial, Oracle said Google had breached Oracle's rights on 37 Java application program interfaces (APIs).

The judge in the case, William Alsup, ruled that the APIs were not protected by copyright and Google (and anyone else) was free to use them.

It was this decision that was overturned on Friday.

In commenting on the earlier case, appeals court judge O'Malley wrote: "We find that the district court failed to distinguish between the threshold question of what is copyrightable - which presents a low bar - and the scope of conduct that constitutes infringing activity."

With the copyright issue settled, the case will now go back before Alsup for a determination on whether Google actions are protected under fair use provisions.

Google had put forward the position that software should be able to be patented but copyrighted. The company says it is now considering its options. It's a fair bet that this dispute has not yet reached its conclusion.

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