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Federal Circuit Reinstates Oracle's Copyright Infringement Claims Against Google, Rejecting Fair Use Defense
On March 27, 2018, in Oracle America, Inc. v. Google LLC, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 7794, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned a jury verdict in favor of Google from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (case number 3:10-cv-03561). In doing so, the court revived Oracle's claim that Google's use of Oracle's open-source Java language code did not constitute “fair use.”
The original jury verdict came after Google copied elements of various application programming interfaces (APIs) that Oracle had created for its Java programming language, and which Google incorporated into its now-ubiquitous Android platform. Google had argued that it had only copied small portions of code which were necessary in order to implement Oracle's open-source Java code and that it had transformed that code by incorporating it into a new mobile platform (Android) that did not compete with any Oracle product. Oracle, by contract, claimed that Google had stolen its copyrighted code as a quick workaround to developing such code on its own, thus removing any chance for Oracle to license its code to mobile platform developers. The jury sided with Google, finding that Google was allowed to use Oracle's copyrighted code under the fair use doctrine. The Federal Circuit disagreed with this conclusion, and therefore overturned the verdict.
In determining that Google was not entitled to claim fair use, the three-judge panel first provided a background for the fair use doctrine:
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