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| The Supreme Court hears Google and Oracle cases |
Ten years after Oracle filed an initial lawsuit against Google over code on the Android platform, the Supreme Court is investigating Google and Oracle.
Since then, the case has been the subject of three legal proceedings and two appeals. The question of how the process works in the interface between copyright operations has persisted for nearly ten years.
When Google first developed Android, it decided to make the platform compatible with the popular Java programming language.
To achieve this, the company has re-implemented several Java APIs, including the 37 APIs mentioned in the lawsuit.
With Oracle and Google, the lawsuit is over whether Oracle (with the standard version of Java) is now entitled to a billion-dollar Android game.
The world has changed since the case was filed, with Larry Ellison still chairing Oracle and Eric Schmidt (Google CEO).
Google is now a subsidiary of Alphabet, and Android has reached version 11. The only thing that remains the same seems to be the popularity of Java as a programming language.
When the battle between Google and Oracle began in 2010, it consisted of seven patents and copyright claims.
In 2012, the issue was reduced to 37 APIs used only for Java applications, including about 11,500 lines of code. Typically, the various versions of Android contain from 1.2 to 14 billion lines of code.
Oracle hasn't confirmed that the aforementioned Java APIs are literally identical, but it has confirmed that the structure, arrangement, and organization of their interfaces are very similar. As a result, Google has violated copyright law.
The Supreme Court ruling in the Google and Oracle case could have a huge impact on the software industry. Most importantly, the Supreme Court can review copyright issues and determine whether copyright protection extends to APIs.
Oracle announced it, and Google stole its property. Google believes the industry has never done this before. API restrictions prevent innovation and hurt consumers.
The problem is at the center of the working principle of modern software development: both sides claim that judgment from the other side's point of view influences innovation.
As Oracle claims, the Supreme Court can decide whether Google should pay nearly $ 9 billion in damages.