Law and Technology: Oracle v. Google: A High-Stakes Legal Fight for the Software Industry

Recently, the US Supreme Court has been hearing an unusually large number of intellectual property cases. But now the Supreme Court may wade into a case that could prove far more important than any of the Court's recent forays into intellectual property. That case, Oracle v. Google, involves a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Communications of the ACM 2015-05, Vol.58 (5), p.27
Main Author: Sprigman, Christopher Jon
Format: Magazinearticle
Language:English
Subjects:
Alliances
Application programming interface
Federal court decisions
Intellectual property
Litigation
Software industry
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Recently, the US Supreme Court has been hearing an unusually large number of intellectual property cases. But now the Supreme Court may wade into a case that could prove far more important than any of the Court's recent forays into intellectual property. That case, Oracle v. Google, involves a foundational question about the copyrightability of software. Back in the mid-1990s, Sun Microsystems and a group of collaborators. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010. Following the acquisition, Oracle has taken a very different path. It has taken steps to close the Java applications programming interface (API) that Sun formerly evangelized as open. And Oracle is relying on copyright law to do the job. The focus of Oracle's effort is a lawsuit the company filed against Google. Regardless of what the Department of Justice says, the Court should go ahead and grant Google's petition for certiorari. And they should reverse the Federal Circuit and declare software APIs uncopyrightable.
ISSN:0001-0782
1557-7317
DOI:10.1145/2742691