New Oracle v. Google Trial Casts 'Long Legal Shadow' on Software Development, EFF Says

Regardless of the outcome of the second trial in Oracle v. Google, “that it proceeded to this stage at all casts a long legal shadow over the entire world of software development,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation Director-Copyright Activism Parker Higgins in a blog post. Google and Oracle began a new trial Monday in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Oracle’s software copyright infringement lawsuit against Google. The new trial will focus on Google’s claim that its copying of the coding and names contained in Oracle’s Java application programming interface (API) technology for use in its Android mobile operating system doesn’t constitute copyright infringement under the fair use doctrine (see 1605090048). A Google win in the new trial would maintain the status quo view that copying APIs qualifies as a fair use, “and even if API labels are subject to copyright restrictions, those restrictions are not absolute,” Higgins said Wednesday. But “there is a real cost to defending fair use” and “the overwhelming majority of developers in the computer industry” don’t have financial resources like Google and Oracle to maintain an extended fair use legal battle, he said. “Beyond all those known costs, wedging a layer of copyright permissions culture into API compatibility comes with serious unknowable costs, too,” Higgins said. “How many developers will abandon ideas for competitive software because the legal risks are too great?”