- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave Google a monumental victory in its copyright battle against Oracle.
- A business analyst said a decision in Oracle’s favor would have been ‘potentially disastrous’.
- Experts believe that a victory in Oracle could have sparked endless copyright lawsuits and a ‘tax’ of innovation.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned a lower court ruling and ended a decade-long legal battle by giving Google a major victory in its copyright battle with Oracle – and much of Silicon Valley breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank you to the Supreme Court for rescuing all modern computers from an onslaught of copyright rolls,” said the former Facebook security chief and current professor at Stanford. Alex Stamos said on Twitter.
Indeed, judging by the reactions, there is a prevailing feeling that Google’s victory means that the technology industry has escaped a bullet. Over the years that this case has dragged on, experts and insiders believe that a victory for Oracle would completely shake the technology industry, and not for the better.
“A decision in Oracle’s favor would have opened the door for copyright rollers, just as we saw happen in the field of software patents,” David Mooter, senior analyst at Forrester, told Insider. “It would give larger technology companies more power to keep their competition out of pocket.”
As always, the devil is in the details, but the basics of the matter: In 2010, Oracle acquired a current company called Sun Microsystems, including the rights to Java, a popular app development platform. Later that year, Oracle sued Google, alleging that it had stolen key pieces of Java to build the Android operating system. Specifically, a set of application programming interfaces, or APIs, that greatly simplifies the process of building Java applications for Android. APIs were – and remain – the standard inventory for apps and software to “talk” to each other.
Google has argued that the APIs in question are not copyrighted, and has defended the support of peers, including Microsoft and IBM. Oracle, meanwhile, has had the backing of Scott co-founder Scott McNealy, media groups including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and even the Trump administration for accusing Google of using the APIs for Android, a form of theft wash.
The courts have eventually scrapped whether APIs are subject to copyright, but the Supreme Court’s ruling states that whatever Google has done, it ultimately constitutes fair use.
Experts believe this is legally good news, not only for one of the many Java users out there, but also for any business that uses another company’s APIs to build its software – which is actually all.
“At this point, the entire software at this point behaved as if APIs were not copyrighted, or as if fair use had been applied. This decision merely maintains the status quo,” Redmonk analyst Stephen O’Grady told Insider. “However, a decision in favor of Oracle would have been disastrous, because literally every API needs to be re-evaluated for legal risk.”
Indeed, experts believe that an Oracle win could open the door for any API platform holder to turn around and deliver against users. Many companies – including Oracle – do exactly what Google did with the Java APIs. If the use or ‘implementation’ of APIs like this poses a legal risk, the whole industry could fight lawsuit after lawsuit.
“As [the] cloud businesses have been plagued by API ownership issues and enabling effective copyright roles, which will hurt the entire business, “said Mike Linksvayer, head of development policy at GitHub, a Microsoft subsidiary, to praise the Supreme Court’s ruling.
As Tom Krazit notes on Protocol, an Oracle victory could essentially open the door to a ‘tax’ on software innovation:
The relevant APIs streamline and simplify the task of writing software in Java, one of the world’s most popular programming languages in the world, for Android. If Google could not use the APIs in Android, developers would have to put a lot more effort into increasing the time and cost involved in writing software. This will make Android less attractive to the large number of developers writing code in Java.
A legal precedent in favor of Oracle could extend the principle in the software world, giving someone responsible for an influential, critical API like the Java applications too much power to play kingmaker.
“Given the cost and difficulty of producing alternative APIs with similar appeal to programmers, the Sun Java API Statement Code would be a lock that limits the future creativity of new applications. Oracle alone would hold the key,” Judge Stephen Breyer wrote. in the 6-2 majority opinion delivered the victory to Google.
Oracle in particular argues the opposite, saying – without directly addressing the issue of APIs and copyrights – that the Supreme Court has effectively re-established Google’s market power in its decision.
“The Google platform has only gotten bigger and the market power bigger,” Deborah Hellinger, senior vice president at Oracle, said in a statement. “The barriers to entry are higher and the ability to compete is lower. They stole Java and set it in motion for a decade like only a monopolist can do. That’s exactly why regulators around the world and in the United States of America investigates Google’s business practices. “
Ultimately, however, the general consensus among insiders in the technology industry is that allowing API reintroduction under fair use leaves a cornerstone of the kind of technological openness that raises the entire sector to the heights it currently enjoys.
Although Oracle lost, it also won in some ways, according to GitHub’s Linksvayer: “It’s good for the whole software industry, including Oracle.