Short Bytes: The Oracle vs Google legal battle has taken another turn with a reversal of the case from the US Supreme court to the district court. It is now scheduled on April 27th. While Oracle claims that Google overstepped the usage of GPL license, Google says APIs used by Google has a minimal role to play in the Android.
Read the Previous case here: Oracle Tells Google’s Secrets In Court — “You Made $31 Billion Using Our Java code”
Well, this legal battle began back in 2012 when Oracle sued Google for copyright violation relating to Google’s usage of Java in the source code of its Android operating system. During the initial battle days, the case saw a roller coaster ride and at first, Google won the dispute.
However, the decision was again reversed during the appeal last year when the US Supreme Court declined to hear Google’s case, resending it to the lower courts for a retrial. And the same speculations of Google being angry came up when Google asked for court’s permission to press sanctions against an Oracle lawyer.
Now this Oracle vs. Google retrial is scheduled for April 27 next month. In this new round of litigation, the district court judge as directed by the US Supreme Court will have to hear the trial on the basis of a fair use of the Java APIs, and not as a copyright infringement dispute.
In this Oracle vs Google battle, Oracle has claimed that Google, despite Java’s GPL open license, had copied the internal structure of some of the language’s APIs. Those language’s APIs were not covered by the GPL. Now, the judge will have to look at how the APIs were used and if a fair use case applies in this scenario.
Also read: Oracle: Google Used Android to “Destroy” the Market for Java
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