Oracle’s nightmare doesn’t get overturned; looses a $9bn claim to Google and much more

U.S District Court has denied Rule 50 motion to overturn the jury verdict, that “Google’s use of Java API(Application Programming Interfaces)was fair use”.

The six year old battle started with oracle already having proven the infringement by Google in the previous suit. Oracle’s Contention was that Google required license to use their java programming. Though Google has written their own programming, but is based on java APIs. In 2012, the District Court held that API’s were not copyrightable.  This was overturned by the U. S court of Appeals for the Federal Court in 2014, but leaving Google with a possible defense of Fair Use.

The unanimous jury decision in May2016, in favor of Google comes as huge relief to thousands of software developers who are able to work across platforms using the same programming interface.

Oracle plans to appeal to the U.S Appeals Court for Federal Circuit in Washington. Experts believe a favorable judgment would be a monumental task to get, since to overturn a jury verdict it would be required by the appeals court to conclude that the jury instructions on legal issues were flawed.