BREAKING: Jury Finds Infringements in Oracle v. Google Copyright Case
The verdict for phase one of the Oracle v. Google trial has finally been read and what sources out of Twitter are saying indicate that some infringement was found on Google's end.
To help make it clearer, I've posted the questions that are being referred to in the verdict below. Here are the main points of the partial verdict:
- The jury found that Google did infringe on the overal structure, sequence, and organization of the 37 Java APIs in question (question 1A in the form below)
- The jury could not decide whether the use of these APIs was "fair use" (question 1B in the form below)
- The jury decided that Google did not infringe on the documentation for the 37 Java APIs (question 2)
- The jury says that Google did infringe on one of the code items listed in the form but not the other two items. (question 3, twitter was not specific on which one)
In response to this Google is moving to have a mistrial on question 1. That will be determined later after the two sides have prepared briefs on the motion. Judge Alsup says he will decide in Phase 3 of the trial whether the infringement in question 1 was considered fair use, since the jury left that question blank.
Here's the form for more clarification:
We'll keep updating this story as more clarification on what this means comes to light. For now, it's on to Phase 2 - the Patent Phase. But let's leave you with the key takeaway for the greater developmer community-
Key Takeaway
In the first part of this trial, the jury was asked to assume that APIs are copyrightable. With that assumption, they have found infringements on the APIs, but the question of their fair use and their overall copyrightability, in the end, rests solely on the shoulders of Judge Alsup. His decision on these questions will be the determining factor as to whether all these doomsday scenarios in developer-world will play out as written by the broader tech media.
Comments
Jonathan Fisher replied on Mon, 2012/05/07 - 4:54pm
Thanks for getting the headline correct :) A lot of other news sites are getting this wrong.
I give a 75% chance the Judge rules in favor of Google, based on a few quotes:
Judge: Do you want all their profits?
Judge: Zero finding of liability so far
Otengi Miloskov replied on Mon, 2012/05/07 - 8:18pm
I try to understand all this law nosense BS but this smells bad for Java, Android, Java opensource.
If the judge rules that those Java apis are copyrightable we are in a big mess as so many people predict. If that happends as Java developer I have to stand far from Java because that marks the end of Java as how we know it right now.
If is like that Java becomes controllable and propietary as never imaginable. It would be very sad with all this years and efforts to make Java/JVM an open ecosystem.
Google with Android no clue what they could do, maybe rewrite some api's and use another language maybe Python.
Adrian Meredith replied on Tue, 2012/05/08 - 3:23am
in response to:
Otengi Miloskov
Not using java is not going to allow you to escape the nightmare scenario. Patent trolls could destroy all programing languages (as most of them are derivitive) as we know them. Write a c# app? Microsoft could potentially own part of it now. Jython, Jruby, ruby, javascript, c++ etc all share common api patterns of which someone irresponsible has probably sitting on patents.
I would laugh however if IBM now goes after oracle with sql patents ;)
Jack Jackson replied on Tue, 2012/05/08 - 7:05am
in response to:
Otengi Miloskov
Otengi Miloskov replied on Tue, 2012/05/08 - 7:15am
in response to:
Adrian Meredith
Otengi Miloskov replied on Tue, 2012/05/08 - 7:27am
in response to:
Jack Jackson
That does not make any sense, Java on Mobile have been dead since long time, ask BlackBerry folks about it.
As for Java continue be relevant thanks to Android, Java continues to be relevant on Mobile, UI and other fields. Without Android I think we could see Java used just on the Server Side or as the new Cobol.
When I write code on Android, I use JDK 1.6 syntax on eclipse and Java code, the only diference is that it runs on different VM. Thats why Android (and viceversa Java continue to be relevant) is a success because it use the Java syntax.
There is not forksand never will be another cause there is OpenJDK, the last fork it was Harmony but they killed. Android is just a VM that uses the Java syntax and belive me, If Android wants to be relevant, it will have to follow always the Java language syntax even Java 8 or 9 or 10. Im cofident on that with Google but Oracle is another story.
If Oracle wins this, it will destroy Java open ecosystem, Also distroy the last chance to be relevant on mobile or UI fields and anything else. Maybe it will stay on the Server side of big corporations because well as Cobol would be very expensive to rewrite that code in another language.
If Google wins this, Java will be relevant on many fields not only server side and it will keep growing in closed and open source ecosystems and everybody could have ther piece of the cake with a happy end.
Cheers.
Aaron Anderson replied on Tue, 2012/05/08 - 10:42am
Great, now we need to include copyright symbols in our code:
import java.lang.Object ©;
All joking aside, the ultimate goal of patents and copyright is to promote the progress of the arts and sciences. It certainly was not indented to sandbag success. I heard rumors that one of the main reasons Oracle bought Sun was to pursue this lawsuit against Google where Sun was unwilling to. Obviously all of this legalism will paralyze Java innovation with uncertainty because with a win here who knows who Oracle will sue next. The Java codebase and API are Open Source and yet Oracle is still litigating so what does that mean for companies who use other more proprietary Oracle products? Whatever Oracle gains financially from this lawsuit it will cost them more in the long run with the tarnishing of their brand.
Otengi Miloskov replied on Tue, 2012/05/08 - 9:12pm
in response to:
Aaron Anderson
Well said Aaron.
+1
Andrea Del Bene replied on Wed, 2012/05/09 - 5:12am
All this story is completely absurd! Java is now released under GPL 2.0, how the hell can you claim that someone has infringed patent over an Open Source project?!
BTW few days ago the European top court has already stated that software APIs cannot be copyrighted:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/05/eus-top-court-apis-cant-be-copyrighted-would-monopolise-ideas.ars
Jacob Anderson replied on Fri, 2012/05/11 - 12:31pm
Individual aspects of any collected work are not copyrightable. Only the entire collected work is considered for copyright protection. That means you can't copyright individual codes, or variable names, or method names. You CAN copyright an API if it is published as a skeleton API in a collected work. Then your infringing collected work would have to be SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR to the original collected work.
www.copyright.gov
There is a tremendous depth of case law around this with a few different automated ways of determining copyright infringement. The most widely accepted method is that developed by Computer Associates, which has a measurement for substantial similarity based upon the root API and code functionality.
There is also the merit of expression. Not only does copyright include the explicit language of a collected work, but also its expression. In the case of computer code, the expression is the algorithm being implemented. You can't take someone's code verbatim, change one variable, and call it your own. That would be a substantially similar infringement. You can take their code, rearrange how the variables are managed, add parallelism to it, or add more functionality such that it would fail the substantial similarity metric for infringement.
Juries don't understand any of this. They are useless in the adjudication of copyright infringement for computer software. The judge will rule against Oracle because there is no proof of substantial similarity in the API. There are only a few pieces (37) that are questionably infringing, which means there is not enough evidence to support the claim of substantial similarity.