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Supreme Court on APIs and Fair Use

By Scott Graham
May 01, 2021

Google LLC didn't get an answer from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether the Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) it copied from Sun Microsystems were copyrightable. But it got just about everything else it could have hoped for in a sweeping 6-2 decision that ended its 11-year copyright clash with Sun's successor, Oracle. Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., 141 S. Ct. 1163 (2021).

As the Supreme Court explained: "An API allows programmers to call upon prewritten computing tasks for use in their own programs."

The decision is worth noting in light of the entertainment industry's growing use of computer code and artificial intelligence (AI) programming for content production. AI can create new expressive content, such as musical compositions, through "machine learning" of preexisting information.

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